Blessings Bead, Debby Dahl Edwardson
Blessings Bead, Debby Dahl Edwardson
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Blessing's Bead

Author: Debby Dahl Edwardson

Narrator: Aaluk Edwardson

Unabridged: 4 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 04/11/2023


Synopsis

ALASKA, 1917
Nutaaq adores her older sister, Aaluk, and the happy world of their close-knit Iñupiaq village. When Aaluk goes across the sea to marry a Siberian Inuit man, she gives Nutaaq a gift from her husband's people: two precious cobalt blue beads.

Through the months that follow, as a great shadow falls over the village, the beads remind Nutaaq of the people she loves, and hold out hope that she might connect with her sister again.

ALASKA, 1989
Blessing's life in the city is unpredictable, with a mother who's sometimes wonderful and sometimes gone. When Mom finally can't take care of her anymore, Blessing is sent to live in a remote Arctic village with a grandmother she barely remembers. In her new home, unfriendly girls whisper in a language she doesn't understand, and Blessing feels like an outsider among her own people.

Until she looks in her grandmother's sewing tin—and finds a cobalt blue bead.

How might Blessing discover her place in her family and community? And will Nutaaq's hope ever be fulfilled? Tracing four generations of bonds and breakage within one Iñupiaq family, Blessing's Bead is a lovely and surprising novel about trauma, survival, and the healing power of culture and stories.

About Debby Dahl Edwardson

Debby Dahl Edwardson has lived at the northern most tip of North America in Barrow, Alaska, for over thirty years. She married into the I´nupiaq community and most of what she writes about is set within this culture. It’s not the culture she was born into, but it’s the one she feels she belongs to in every sense of the word. While My Name Is Not Easy is fiction, it was inspired by real stories from a number of boarding schools that once operated throughout Alaska.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ana

Blessing's Bead follows two sisters (Nutaaq and her older sister, Aaluk) living during the pre-mechanized days of the Iñupiaq (1917) and then switches to 1989, when Nutaaq/Blessing, living in Anchorage with her grandma and younger brother Tupaaq/Issac. The latter siblings have been moved by Social S......more

I picked this book up because it was featured on Booklist's "Top 10 First Novels for Youth". The story sounded intriguing because it takes place in Alaska, and I am somewhat familiar with that place as some of you may know. It did not disappoint. This is a young adult book that I hope gets a LOT more......more

In 1917 Nutaaq, a young Iñupiaq girl, is separated from her family when her sister marries a Siberian and her parents die in an epidemic that wipes out almost everyone she knows. In 1989 that girl's great-granddaughter, also named Nutaaq, must also deal with the separation of her family when her mot......more