Northwind (Gary Paulsen)

Northwind
Gary Paulsen
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Fiction, MG Adventure/Historical Fiction
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: After his mother died in childbirth, with no father named or known, the boy Leif grew up as little better than a thrall among the seafaring folk, first on the docks and then on the ships, until at last he and a handful of others were sent to a small camp to smoke fish and wait for the return of the seal hunting crew. Only the crew never returned, and the only ship that came was an ill-omened vessel of dead and dying strangers who so poison the air with their brief presence that soon everyone falls ill. With the last of his strength, Old Carl sends young Leif away in a dugout cedar canoe, telling him to head north, always north, and never return to this cursed place. For the first time in his often-wretched young life, Leif finds himself alone... and for the first time, he must learn who he truly is, what he is made of, and if he can survive the wild, unforgiving world in which he wanders.

REVIEW: This is, I believe, the last story published by the late Gary Paulsen, and his ability to bring the wilderness to life, in all its wonders and glories and dangers, remains clear. Set in an unspecified prehistory in Nordic lands, Northwind is a coming-of-age journey for a young man who has lived his whole life next to the sea, on the sea, surrounded by the sea, but has never truly experienced the sea until thrust upon it in the little dugout canoe. As in other Paulsen titles, Leif's adventures are as much about his failures and moments of quickly-dashed hubris as they are about his successes and discovering the marvels, the borderline-spiritual connection with the natural world - not just the animals, but the winds and waters and living currents, the very pulse of the sea itself. Unlike some of Paulsen's other stories, there isn't a clear goal for Leif to drive for; he's not trying to return to the village he came from, where he'd just be a veritable slave again, or any other particular destination. His journey falls somewhere between exploration and spirit quest, potentially one he will never finish even in a long lifetime. This lack of goal makes the ending feel a little anticlimactic, almost like Paulsen may have planned for a sequel or series or simply another part of this book but (for obvious reasons, unfortunately) never finished the thought. Still, even a somewhat inconclusive tale by Gary Paulsen is a beautiful thing, a poetic ode to nature and a way of life and thinking that sadly seems endangered.

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