Title: StormCatcher
Author: Linda Eketoft
Publisher: Partridge Publishing
ISBN: 978-1543758061
Pages: 296
Genre: Fiction/Thriller
Reviewed by: Jake Bishop

Read Book Review

One cannot get too deeply into Linda Eketoft’s novel StormCatcher without being reminded of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner. The albatross that hovers over both her novel and his poem is an iconic figure perhaps forever tied to tales of the sea. In Coleridge’s classic poem, the bird plays a significant role in the plight of his protagonist. In Eketoft’s novel the winged fowl takes on symbolic proportions less direct and more ambivalent for the central character and his quest toward potential oblivion.

Christian Pereia is a man from Buenos Aires, Argentina whose wife and daughter were killed in a tragic automobile accident. Sometime after their deaths, his continuing inability to deal with their passing leads him to take a journey from which there may be no return. He supplies a sail boat and leaves on a southernly trek of Antarctica. Alone, with only the sea, the ice, the memory of his beloved family, and a wandering albatross who comes and goes, Christian experiences an adventure unlike any other.

While the majority of his journey is traveled in loneliness that would be crushing for most people, Christian does occasionally cross paths with human beings scarred in their own right. A potentially pleasant dinner with an older couple dissolves into despondency when it is learned that they too have recently lost a love one. The shared sadness becomes too unbearable to withstand. When Christian crosses paths with a Russian geologist virtually on the run from the questionable death of a young environmentalist, fear, trepidation, and self-interest overwhelm more unselfish emotions and lead to a parting devoutly sought.

The essence of author Eketoft’s novel however, is both the physical difficulty of the voyage itself and the tempestuous emotions fighting for dominance within Christian himself. This is the story of a man who is willing to take on insurmountable odds because he’s already accepted an inevitable outcome. Yet, there are forces within him, that keep drawing him back from the precipice—forces that seemingly won’t allow him to give in to the darkness that surrounds his soul.

Eketoft shows a remarkable ability to paint a verbal wonderland of one of the harshest environments on earth. Her skill at depicting scenes of geographic awe, rivet readers to page after page of ice, inlets, glorious lights and glacial majesty extraordinary in its intensity. The structure of her narrative also makes it possible to learn enormous amounts about a phenomenal continent without losing the lifeline to Christian’s personal story. StormCatcher is an achievement of both art and intellect.