StormCatcher

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.

- Pacific Book Review

"His haggard face expressed a strange longing. His bleak eyes did not contain any aspirations. They were always far away in a reality known by people who never return."

There are two main characters in this novel. One is a man. The other is a continent. Christian is the man who has suffered the irreparable loss of his wife and daughter. Antarctica is the continent that, in its own way, probably understands Christian's loss but is not prepared to offer any mercy for it. Deciding to leave his home in Buenos Aires, Christian stocks a sailing vessel and plans a trip to traverse the earth's most unfriendly and uninhabitable continent alone. He is more concerned with the journey than the outcome, having reached the conclusion that an end comes to all, especially those who no longer have a valid reason to live. His passage, however, keeps providing such immense physical challenges that his emotional ennui has less and less time to overwhelm him.

With little to do on the long nights alone on his boat, Christian turns to reading and becomes enthralled with the story of an early explorer whose travels may have intertwined with those of his own family. Though not by his design, he encounters fellow humans who shake his sensitivities to the core. His interactions with indigenous wildlife also evoke feelings he has a difficult time coming to grips with.

Writer Eketoft's descriptive talent is on vivid display from the first page to last. She finds ways to depict the imposing land and seascapes in ways that mesmerize as well as describe. Her evocations of Christian's battles with the elements, as well as those confrontations with his own existence, are both searing and memorable. For maximum effect, this is a novel to be savored slowly because the author has created a world that demands attention be paid to both an unrelenting man and an unconquerable continent.

- The US Review of Books