The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

From the lagoons of Mexico to Arctic glaciers, grey whale mothers are swimming with their calves, past predatory orcas, through a warming sea. For 10,000 miles, they endure one of the longest mammalian migrations on the planet. Following them, by bus, train and ferry, are Doreen Cunningham and her young son Max, in pursuit of a wild hope: that their family of two can make it by themselves. Doreen first visited Utqiagvik, the northernmost town in Alaska, as a young journalist reporting on climate change among indigenous whaling communities. There, she joined the spring whale hunt under the neverending Arctic light, watching for bowhead whales and polar bears, drawn deeply into an Iñupiaq family, their culture and the disappearing ice. Years later, plunged into sudden poverty and isolation, living in a Women’s Refuge with her baby son, Doreen recalls the wilderness that once helped shape her own.