Blessing’s Bead

Awards:​

• Junior Library Guild selection

• Booklist’s Top 10 Historical Fiction for Young Adults, 2010

• Booklist’s Top 10 First Novels for Young Adults, 2010

• ILA Notable Books for a Global Society 

• YALSA/ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults

​Reviews:

"Two narratives, one historical, one nearly contemporary, make up this beautiful first novel, set among Iñupiaq Eskimos in Alaska’s far northern territories . . . Concrete and symbolic references to the transforming power of language, names, and stories link the two narratives, but it’s the Nutaaq’s rhythmic, indelible voices—both as steady and elemental as the beat of a drum or a heart—that will move readers most. A unique, powerful debut."
—Starred Booklist

"Debby Dahl Edwardson’s 2009 novel, Blessing’s Bead, is a rare and beautiful book. It’s a short read that nonetheless makes many far-reaching connections, like a folk tale or a legend, wrapped in a tough but straightforward narrative, leaving echoes that linger long after and in unanticipated ways."
—Washington Post

“Blessing’s Bead is beautifully seen, glinting with Arctic light. It is also beautifully heard. Edwardson’s voice is as clear and fresh as a wind of the frozen sea. There are passages that simply take your breath away.” 

⎯Tim Wynne-Jones, award-winning author of the Rex Zero books.

Blessing’s Bead, grew from an interview I did as a Public Radio reporter in 1986. I was covering a meeting of ICC, the Inuit Circumpolar Council. ICC is an international organization representing the Inuit people of Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Russia. Meetings are held every four years in one of the member countries.  Because of the Cold War, the Russian Inuit had never been allowed to participate in this event.

In 1986, however the cold war "ice curtain" was lifting and the Russian Inuit would be allowed to attend. At that meeting, I interviewed an elderly Yup'ik woman who remembered vividly the days of her youth when the Siberian Inuit had visited her village.

Some of her people, she told me, had even married Siberians and gone to live in Russia. By 1986 there were families that had been separated for over 40 years by the Cold War.

I’d never known of this bit of history and I never forgot the image that elder woman left me with: the image of the oldest women, standing on the western shores of an arctic island, gazing west towards Russia with tears in their eyes, missing the relatives they would never see again.

This image gave birth to Blessing’s Bead.