Cuando Jenna Rosen abandona su cómoda vida en Seattle para visitar Wrangell, Alaska, supone una desgarradora vuelta al pasado. Hogar hace mucho tiempo de su abuela nativa americana, Wrangell se halla cerca del complejo turístico Thunder Bay, donde el joven hijo de Jenna, Bobby, desapareció hace dos años. Nunca se encontró su cuerpo, y ella está decidida a enterrar el doloroso misterio de su muerte. Pero necesita respuestas y armada sólo con los feroces instintos de protección de una madre, la búsqueda de Jenna de la verdad sobre su hijo –y la fuerza de su fe– está a punto de arrastrarla a un aterrador y trascendental abismo…

Intriguing. Jenna, two years after her son's drowning, returns to Alaska not sure what she's seeking. She returns to her grandmother's house & interacts with the Tlingit, sifting through the beliefs of her ancestors, including the kushtaka - the shape shifting otter. I particularly liked the belief that nothing is good vs evil...it just is ( )

A grieving mother returns to the place where she lost her son looking for closure. Filled with the Haida folklore of the kushtaka, creating a mystical setting. ( )

Garth Stein published Raven Stole the Moon more than a decade before The Art of Racing in the Rain became a New York Times Bestseller. The jacket summary intrigued me: a Seattle woman grieving the loss of her five-year-old son returns to her ancestral hometown in Alaska where she is confronted by Tlingit spirits.

I wanted to enjoy Raven Stole the Moon more than I did. I found that I could not relate to main character Jenna as much as I related to the dog narrator of The Art of Racing in the Rain. I suspect this is due to a combination of Stein’s inexperience as novelist at the time and the fact that he’s a man. Sometimes male writers have trouble realistically creating female characters (and vice versa, I’m sure.) In some ways, the plot was predictable and both Jenna and her husband’s choices irritated me. The supernatural aspects to the story didn’t quite work for me either. ( )

This is an early book of Stein's (1998) that was re released after the phenomenal success of The Art of Racing in the Rain (2008). I loved racing, but this book is disjointed, unfocused, and just awful. It started out okay, but quickly got murky. This attests how ten years makes a big difference in a writer's skill. ( )