Penina Spinka: Picture Maker

By HAZEL PHILLIPS

Set in 14th-century America, Picture Maker is the compelling story of Garahstah, an 11-year-old girl of the Ganeogaono tribe who is gifted with the ability to draw pictures. Her father is a revered warrior, and her grandmother is the clan leader in a matriarchal tribe where men rule only in war and captured enemies are tortured and eaten.

During an invasion by a neighbouring tribe, the Algonquin, Garahstah is captured and kept as a slave and trophy. This marks the beginning of her never-ending quest for peace and happiness. Her journey takes her from slavery with the Algonquin, to refuge with the Naskapi, and later to live among the Eskimo people. Further circumstances lead her to cross the ice to Greenland, where she finds her destiny as she believes her god Orenda wishes it, in the form of Halvard, a hairy Greenlander.

Each tribe she lives with has its peculiarities, from the Greenlanders who eat nothing but milk and cheese, having never made bread or cereal, to the Inuit, who will not bathe in pools for fear of water monsters lurking beneath.

Picture Maker has been compared to Jean Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear, in that a girl is taken from the safety and familiarity of her family and forced into the unknown, in a well-imagined long-ago time. It profiles several tribes and peoples in America, as well as resistance to Christianity in Greenland, and the Norse invasions, led by Leif Eriksson during the 11th century.

This highly dramatic, intensely interesting work is largely fiction, but with a factual base. Spinka has done her research well, and has included stories and legends from Inuit and Iroquois sources.

Part of Garahstah's conflict stems from the way that women's status changes across the various tribes. The Ganeogaono rulers are women, whereas the Inuit men happily dominate their wives.

With each new people she lives with comes a new name and the daily challenge of learning to live as they do. Constantly she is seen as an outsider: the Algonquin despise her, the Naskapi are bewildered by her, the Inuit respect her but keep their distance, and the Greenlanders openly show their hatred for her and the deeds of her ancestors.

The foreign and ever-changing place and character names can be confusing but don't detract from the enjoyment of this fascinating story. Spinka is at work on the sequel to Picture Maker.

HarperCollins

$31.95