Two Old Women [Paperback]

This novel of two Native American women abandoned by their tribe in the Alaskan Yukon won the 1993 Western State Book award.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Grade 7 Up-Velma Wallis adapted her prize-winning book (HarperPerennial, 1993) from a tale she first heard from her mother, an Athabascan Indian in the Alaskan Yukon. Its transition into audio format is impressive: taken from oral tradition, it's tellable and starkly poetic, while the deep rich voice of narrator Russell Means with his Native American inflections does much to enhance its power and authenticity. The story is compelling. Abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine, two old women are left to perish on their own. Although they've grown used to complaining and letting others do for them, the two resolve not to wait passively for death but to fight against it. With trapping skills they haven't used for years and strengthened by their bond of friendship, the two women survive the winter to ultimately come face to face with the members of their tribe, none of whom has fared as well as they. Utterly convincing in its details and resolution, this will offer listeners in seventh grade and up vivid insight into a Native American culture. At the same time, it rises above the particulars of time and place to become a metaphor with a message or inspiration not only for students, women or the elderly, but for all members of the human race.
Carol Katz, Harrison Public Library, NY
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Growing up Gwich'in (one of the 11 distinct ethnic peoples of Alaska) in Fort Yukon, closer to the Arctic Circle than Fairbanks, Wallis had been hearing all her life the legend of the two old women abandoned to die by their starving tribe. Their own children abetted the cruel (not, incidentally, just to Western civilization) tribal decision. Wallis' rendition in serviceable prose of this culturally famous story is somewhere between translation and what is sometimes called re-creation. The tale (which has a happy ending) deserves a place in every regional collection but has a greater appeal, too. Roland Wulbert --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Enchanting retelling--and a 1993 Western States Book Award winner--of a tribal legend about two old women, left behind to die, who instead went on to survive and thrive. Wallis--one of 13 siblings with their roots in the Athabaskan tribe of Alaska--used to listen to her mother tell stories every night after the day's hard work was done. The story of the two old women was a favorite: In a winter of famine, the tribe decides to leave behind two elderly women, who although mobile and somewhat productive, complain constantly and require assistance. Some people are shocked and distressed, but no one, including the daughter of one of the women, speaks up, afraid of precipitating violence in the tribe. As the tribe marches off, the two women, 75 and 80 years old, vow they will ``die trying.'' They manage to catch a few rabbits and a squirrel to sustain them, then set off to a campsite miles away where, they recall, food is more abundant. They reach their goal, survive the winter, and spend the summer laying in a store of foodstuffs that will eventually sustain the whole tribe when it returns in search of them. Wallis recounts the tale here in simple but vivid detail, describing a life of unremitting labor in an extraordinary landscape. The story speaks to many modern concerns--abandonment or isolation of old men and women in nursing homes and retirement communities; the elderly's perhaps unwitting view of themselves as a privileged elite, but one which greatly underestimates its capabilities; the way in which the greatest good for the greatest number can lead to injustice and even cruelty, and in which trust, once broken, takes time and hard work to repair. Full of adventure, suspense, and obstacles overcome--an octogenarian version of Thelma and Louise triumphant. (Illustrations) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

"No one should miss this beautiful legend." -- -- Tony Hillerman

"This story speaks straight to the heart with clarity, sweetness, and wisdom." -- -- Ursula K. Le Guin

"Velma Wallis has given us a gift to cherish." -- -- Alaska

Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River area in Alaska, this is the suspenseful, shocking, ultimately inspirational tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine. Though these two women have been known to complain more than contribute, they now must either survive on their own or die truing. In simple but vivid detail, Velma Wallis depicts a landscape and way of life that are at once merciless and starkly beautiful. In her old women, she has created two heroines of steely determination whose story of betrayal, friendship,community, and forgiveness will carve out a permanent place in readers' imaginations.

Velma Wallis was born in 1960 in Fort Yukon, a remote village of about 650 people in Interior Alaska. Growing up in a traditional Athabaskan family, Wallis was one of thirteen children. When she was thirteen, her father died and she left school to help her mother raise her younger siblings.

Wallis later moved to her father's trapping cabin, a twelve-mile walk from the village. She lived alone there intermittently for a dozen years, learning traditional skills of hunting and trapping. An avid reader, she passed her high school equivalency exam and began her first literary project--writing down a legend her mother had told her, about two abandoned old women and their struggle to survive.

That story became her first book, Two Old Women, published by Epicenter Press in 1993. As her second book, Bird Girl and the Man who Followed the Sun, went to press, Wallis was living in Fort Yukon with her husband, Jeffrey John, and their two children. The family also spends time in the neighboring village of Venetie.