This is KUOW’s book club, and we just read through the first half of Kristen Millares Young’s debut novel “Subduction.” I’m your club guide, Katie Campbell. Let’s get into it.
I’m just a reader, standing in front of Claudia, asking her to chill out.
To recap, briefly: Claudia, one of our main characters, is a Latina anthropologist who has traveled to the Makah Nation in Neah Bay to continue her work with an elderly Makah woman named Maggie. Maggie is in the throes of dementia when her son Peter, our other main character, reappears. Peter is haunted by the murder of his father. Claudia is haunted by her husband’s affair with her own sister. Neither deals with their pain in an especially healthy way, but Claudia is dealing with it by taking what isn’t hers: Maggie’s stories, memories, and songs.