Two Old Women : An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival - Softcover

Wallis, Velma

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0704344246 ISBN 13: 9780704344242

Publisher: The Women's Press, 2000

Synopsis

In this traditional Alaskan legend, two old women abandoned by their migrating tribe refuse to die in the wilderness. They irritate each other, snap and snarl as they struggle for survival, in this testament to the resilience of older women

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Velma Wallis and her mother were chopping wood at the mouth of the Porcupine River, where it flows into the Yukon, when Wallis first heard the legend of the Two Old Women - an elderly pair's "journey into hardship." Passed from mothers to daughters for many generations, the ancient story of abandonment is tragic and shocking but comes with a surprise that will lighten your heart. In 1993, Velma Wallis's retelling of the legen in book form challenged her people's oral traditions and revealed old taboos, yet revealed universal themes. Ten years after the first edition, Two Old Women has been translated into seventeen languages, sellingmore than one million copies. Today, the legend is still being passed between mother and daughter, and from sister to sister, with its hopeful lesson for us all.

About the Author:

Velma Wallis was born in 1960 in Fort Yukon, a remote village of about 650 people in Interior Alaska. Growing up in a traditional Athabaskan family, Wallis was one of thirteen children. When she was thirteen, her father died and she left school to help her mother raise her younger siblings.

Wallis later moved to her father's trapping cabin, a twelve-mile walk from the village. She lived alone there intermittently for a dozen years, learning traditional skills of hunting and trapping. An avid reader, she passed her high school equivalency exam and began her first literary project-writing down a legend her mother had told her, about two abandoned old women and their struggle to survive.

That story became her first book, Two Old Women, published by Epicenter Press in 1993. As her second book, Bird Girl and the Man who Followed the Sun, went to press, Wallis was living in Fort Yukon with her husband, Jeffrey John, and their two children. The family also spends time in the neighboring village of Venetie.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Women's Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0704344246
• ISBN 13: 9780704344242
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160