ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS/ZIA

Ah, the book that taught me the word “abalone”! I’ve read Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins a dozen times over the years and still love it as much as ever, but in a totally different way than when I was a kid. Back then, I was all about the cozy Little Houseish survival porn, yearning for my very own island, a pet wolf-dog, a skirt made of cormorant feathers, and a fence made of whale ribs. And…OK, I still covet those things, but this time, reading it for my book club, I was struck by how very poignant this story is. Karana’s mother is dead, her father and most of the other men in her tribe are murdered by Aleuts, and she stays behind on the island for her little brother (in real life, probably her son) who promptly gets killed by wild dogs, leaving her all alone for 18 years before being rescued and taken to the mainland, where she finds that her people have scattered, no one speaks her language, and she dies within weeks. And I was jealous of her tame sea otter?

I think I glossed over a lot of the sadness back then because (A) I took the matter-of-factness of Karana’s voice at face value, though that same stoicism only amps up the emotion for me as an adult; I get goosebumps every time I read the chilling simplicity with which she mourns her faithful dog: “‘Rontu!’ I cried. ‘Oh, Rontu!’ I buried him on the headland.” SOB! (B) The descriptions of the landscape and animals and Karana’s love for the island are so very lovely that I still want to go to there; I was a nature-loving kid, but it’s extra-cool now that I live in the very area where the book takes place. This was the first time I’d reread the book since moving here—I don’t think I even realized it was set in California when I was younger—and this time around, having visited one of the Channel Islands, an elephant seal (“sea elephant” in the book) rookery, and the Santa Barbara Mission (where a plaque acknowledges the unknown gravesite of the real-life “Karana”), I could envision everything so vividly.

For extra credit, I figured I’d better check out Zia, the sequel to Blue Dolphins, which covers Karana’s brief post-rescue life through the eyes of her niece, Zia. O’Dell does a good job of conveying the complex, often chaotic interactions between the native peoples, padres, soldiers, and ranchers of Southern California during this era, and the Karana-related bits—still poignant as hell—do a nice job of wrapping up the loose ends of her story (dog lovers will be glad to know that Zia and Rontu-Aru befriend each other at the end), but overall it falls flat in comparison, maybe because Zia is powerless in her world, whereas Karana’s is such an epic tale of self-sufficiency and (a certain kind of) freedom.