Anna, Like Thunder by Peggy Herring
At age eighteen, Anna sails with her new husband on a trading/conquest mission down the west coast of modern Canada and the US on behalf of the Russian Tsar. Author, Peggy Herring, deeply researched history, and cultures to create a historical novel from a few comments in the accounts of men. Anna, Like Thunder is the voice of a ghosted woman.
Still water in the straights forces the ship into a narrow harbour, where the relentless ocean swells drag the ship onto sharp, hidden rocks. The crew and Anna abandon ship.
The men, including Anna’s husband, the navigator, are extremely fearful of the local people. The Russians are certain that the locals intend to kill them, probably as that is what they intend to do to the local people. Because aggression has made them sailors, they cannot adapt otherwise to circumstances. Feeling themselves to be conquerors, civilized and infinitely superior, they steal food for their own survival without a single thought to the needs of the people who gathered it.
Of course, the local people are highly skilled at living in their own environment. Several different groups interact with the stranded Russians, some aggressively and some more diplomatically. After no interactions bring reasonable results, Anna, and the ship’s cook, Maria, and two of the men are taken away by the locals. Anna’s new education begins.
Never mistreated, they are expected to work, at first startling for Anna but not surprising to Maria, who, as a Russian serf, is quite used to the tasks needed to keep a large household fed and clothed. Slowly, Anna begins to understand the way in which people thrive when they are in tune with natural cycles. She thinks about the Russian culture that grabs everything possible – fish, land, people. She marvels at how the people of this alien household harvest berries, plants, sea food and fish with great care to preserve stocks for the coming years. Very slowly, she recognizes that Maria has relaxed into this new culture, in which she is freer than at “home”, a place she has not seen since childhood.
Anna, Like Thunder is a revealing glimpse into the cultures of the west coast at the time of contact with Europeans. More importantly, it is a meditation on the rights and obligations of all communities.
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