The Whaler's Daughter
Age range 12+
Savannah Dawson starts questioning everything she thought she knew about the orcas her family hunts, her family, and herself.
In 1910, twelve-year-old Savannah lives with her widowed father on a whaling station in New South Wales, Australia. For generations, the Dawson family has carried on a very unusual way of life there. They use orcas to help them hunt whales. But Savannah believes the orcas hunted something else—her older brothers, who died mysteriously while fishing. Haunted by their deaths, Savannah wants to become a whaler to prove to her father that she’s good enough to carry on the family legacy and avenge her slain brothers. Meeting an aboriginal boy, Figgie, changes that. Figgie helps Savannah to hone her whaling skills and teaches her about the Law of the Bay. When she is finally able to join the crew, Savannah learns just how dangerous the whole business is. A whale destroys her boat and Savannah sinks into the shark-infested waters. That’s when the mysterious spirit orca Jungay returns to rescue her, and she vows to protect the creatures. That vow tests her mettle when the rapacious owner of a fishing fleet captures the orca pod and plans to slaughter them.
Jerry Mikorenda’s biography America’s First Freedom Rider: Elizabeth Jennings, Chester A. Arthur, and the Early Fight for Civil Rights was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020. His short stories have appeared in Cowboy Jamboree, BULL, Gravel Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other magazines. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, The Boston Herald, and the Encyclopedia of New York City. The Whaler’s Daughter is his first novel.
