Anchorage Daily News: Debut novel set in Bristol Bay delivers generations of women’s storytelling

Mia Heavener, now living in Anchorage, grew up fishing in Bristol Bay, where she absorbed stories her mother and other women told between tides and over tea. Her lovely debut novel set in a village near Dillingham, “Under Nushagak Bluff,” draws upon those stories and her own knowledge of the region, its history, its Yup’ik people, and the fishermen and cannery workers who came and went with the salmon runs. It is a compelling narrative, rich in its evocations of a time and place largely unrepresented in our literature — and a welcome addition to it.