eko· ! eko· !
Gracious thanks to the Quileute Tribal Council who responded positively to my project. Through tribal publicist Jackie Jacobs, I was blessed to spend many hours with Jay Powell and Vickie Jensen with whom the Quileute elders have entrusted much of their language and cultural teachings. I’m grateful for the extensive reference materials they provided, the translations, advice, and their willingness to discuss their work and their lives.
Warm thanks to Hoh elder Viola Riebe for sharing her memories of growing up in the Hoh River area and offering sage advice that informed the passages in this book that are set among the Chalats, now known as the Hoh or the Hoh River people.
I’m grateful for all the time I spent in La Push and Neah Bay. These were quiet visits, sometimes with my son, sometimes alone, when I experienced the warm hospitality of the community during Makah Days and Quileute Days and was invited to share salmon, watch games, listen to music, see the dancers, and thrill to some of the best fireworks displays I’ve seen in my life. In winter, I trekked the trails to Cape Flattery, to Tsoo-Yess Beach, to Rialto, First and Second Beach, and to the site of the Sviatoi Nikolai Memorial, completed during the writing of this book, to get a sense of what Anna might have seen and felt in the days after the shipwreck.
In Sitka, Alaska, I would like to thank Hayley Chambers, then-curator of the Sitka Historical Society and Museum, and Jackie Hamburg of the Sheldon Jackson Museum.
I’d like to thank the Maritime Museum of British Columbia for giving me my first hands-on experience of a sea otter pelt. I’d searched high and low only to unexpectedly discover several hanging on the wall in the old museum in Bastion Square in Victoria, BC.
My team of early readers graciously ploughed through my first draft, and their suggestions improved the text in many ways. Thank you, Susan Gee, Rita Parikh, and Meg Walker, for your courage and wisdom.
Taryn Boyd, publisher at Brindle & Glass, has been behind this project for much longer than anyone could imagine. She also critiqued an early draft and over coffee we spent many hours discussing not only the novel and my struggles, but also cultural appropriation, truth and reconciliation, the too-often overlooked work of Indigenous novelists in Canada (two thumbs up for Ruby Slipperjack), and our own family histories. Our discussions gave extra dimensions to the text, and I thank her for encouraging me to go deeper.
Thanks to Claire Mulligan, my extraordinary editor, who helped steer this novel in a direction that’s true—in so many senses of the word.
It’s been a joy to work with Tori Elliott, Colin Parks, Renée Layberry, and the rest of the team at Brindle & Glass. Warm thanks to Tree Abraham for the creative genius that generated the book’s cover and Kate Kennedy for her sharp eyes.
The Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council both generously provided funding during the writing of this project. This funding allowed me to travel to Neah Bay, La Push, and Seattle, Washington, Sitka, Alaska, and Vancouver, BC. Moreover, it gave me the time and space to be able to research and write.
Thank you to D. M. Thomas for his kind permission to quote the lines from “You Will Hear Thunder” that appear in the epigraph. That poem is published in his collected translations of the poetry of Anna Akhmatova, titled You Will Hear Thunder.
Thank you also to Kerry Tymchuk of the Oregon Historical Society for kind permission to quote or paraphrase certain passages from The Wreck of the Sv. Nikolai, edited and with an introduction by Kenneth N. Owens, translated by Alton S. Donnelly. These brief passages appear on pages vii, 32, 49, 58-60, 154-155, and 219-221 in the text. Deep thanks to Sally Owens who, under particularly difficult circumstances, facilitated this permission.
There are many others who offered encouragement, meals, drinks, rides, roofs, books and articles, advice and sympathy, and put up with my obsession. Know that you are in my heart, and I thank you for your contribution. Any errors in the book are my responsibility and not those of the people who’ve touched this project over the years.
NOTES ON LANGUAGE AND GLOSSARY
Long before Europeans came to the shores of the Olympic Peninsula, there was active trade up and down the coast. There was also a lot of movement of people through, for example, frequent and widespread socializing, marriage, sharing of songs, and the movement of prisoners and slaves.
There were (and are) also dozens of languages. These are not simply dialects of one common language. The Makah language is very distinct from what is spoken by the Quileutes and Hoh. Thus, it is widely accepted that many coastal Indigenous people were (and are) bilingual, if not multilingual. Children of exogamous marriages were raised speaking both their mother’s and father’s languages.
Fur traders such as Timofei Tarakanov often used this multilingualism to their advantage. By learning a few words of one coastal language, they were able to make themselves understood. There were reportedly various lists of “Nootkan” words published in Europe and shared among the European traders starting from the visit of Captain James Cook to the Pacific coast in 1778.
This is different from what we know today as Chinook Jargon. Chinook Jargon originated as a trade language that, according to anthropologist Dr. Jay Powell, did not develop until after the arrival of J.J. Astor’s traders in the lower Columbia River in 1812—a few years after Anna’s time. Chinook Jargon has deep roots in the coastal Indigenous trade language, but includes contributions from French and English.
During her time on the coast, Anna dealt with language in this multifaceted context.
A couple of notes on the Russian language: adding ‘i’ to the end of a Russian noun makes it plural; and, Russian naming conventions are used throughout the novel. Anna is known as Madame Bulygina, Anna Petrovna, Anya, and Annichka, in decreasing formality. Her husband is known as Nikolai Issakovich and Kolya, a diminutive for Nikolai.
Babathid: (Makah baba 
id) white people living in houses on the water
Bast: (Russian) reeds or grass
Beze: (Russian) meringue cookie
Blin: (Russian) pancake
Cache-Cache: (French) hide and seek
Chabas: (Makah čabas) sweet, tasty
Cheetoolth: (Makah 
) war club
Cingatudax: (Unangam Tunuu or Aleut) yarrow. Maria would know Achillea millefolium var. borealis, but this is more likely the similar Achillea millefolium var. californica.
Dikari: (Russian) savages
Domovoi: (Russian) spirit of the house
Hamidux: (Unangam Tunuu or Aleut) yellow avens. Maria would know Geum calthifolium, but this is more likely the similar Geum macrophyllum.
Khorovod: (Russian) folk dance, a combination of circle dance and chorus
Kizhuch: (Russian, origins Inuktitut) Coho salmon
Kluchab: (Makah 
) large mussel
Klush: (Nuu-chah-nulth) good, pretty
Koliuzhi: (Russian) Indigenous people. This word originates from the Sugpiaq-Alutiiq word “kulut’ruaq,” which means wooden dish. The Russians derogatorily used it because of the practice of some Indigenous Alutiiq women of putting a wooden labret in their pierced lower lip.