Chasing at the Surface A Novel [Hardcover]

Sometimes finding your way home takes more than courage. It takes a leap of faith.

Chasing at the Surfacetells the story of a young girls courage and the healing power of nature. After her mother unexpectedly leaves home, twelve-year old Marisa struggles with her feelings of loss and abandonment just as a pod of nineteen orca whalesmothers with their new calves following a run of chum salmonbecome trapped in the enclosed inlet near her Northwest home. Marisas journey to help the whales find their way home brings her to a new understanding of the assaults humans have had on nature, and the complicated meaning of family and home.

Chasing at the Surface is a novel, and its characters and situations are fictional, although some place-names have been borrowed and much of the genealogy and science behind the study of killer whales is authentic. What is perhaps most interesting is that the backstory for this book is based on a true event.

The actual story goes like this. In the fall of 1997, nineteen Southern Resident killer whales (SRKW), members of L-25 sub-pod, paid an unexpected and unusual visit to Dyes Inlet, a small estuary in Puget Sound, near Seattle, Washington. Most experts believe they were following a run of chum salmon or maybe they were just curious, as killer whales can be. Either way, their thirty-day visit was unforgettable for anyone who had the chance to observe these highly social animals up close.When I decided I wanted to create a story to share the special excitement of that experience almost twenty years ago, I read all I could about the actual event, spoke to whale researchers, journalists, and community residents, and visited Dyes Inlet many times. Much of what I learned became part of this book. But as fiction authors often do, I took some liberties in my story, adjusting timelines, changing settings, and creating a slantwise version of the geography of the inlet. In this book, SoundKeeper is loosely based on the l@