BOOK NOOK: This dying heroine embarked on a bold mission to save a child

This new book was inspired by Straley’s wife Jan. She is a marine biologist and an expert on whales. For many years they lived in Sitka, Alaska where Jan could take her small boat out on the ocean to observe those astounding mammals up close. Jan has been dealing with Parkinson’s for many years.

Our heroine in “Big Breath In” is a marine biologist named Delphine. As the book opens she is in Seattle getting treatment for terminal cancer, staying in a hotel with other residents in similar situations. They are congregating there in close proximity to medical care providers. She’s a widow. Her husband John died in a bicycle accident.

It is also a rough neighborhood. Early on Delphine observes a young thug assaulting a woman who is a holding baby. When she sees this young woman getting knocked down she intervenes. I won’t spoil it by saying what our spunky interloper does to the young man. Suffice it to say that it is rather shocking.

One of Delphine’s neighbors at the hotel is about to die-he gives her a gift: a motorcycle. The next thing we know she is astride that machine in hot pursuit of the same thug she encountered previously. It turned out he is running a lucrative business abducting infants then placing them with adoptive families who are looking for babies that can be certified to be 100% white,

In this slightly futuristic story abortion is illegal everywhere in the US. There are quite a few extra babies available for this thug to process through his white supremacist adoption agency. Delphine just wants to find that first baby she witnessed being embraced by the woman the thug had pummeled. Delphine wants to reunite this child with the real mother.

It is a wild chase. Delphine clings to life while hurtling toward a showdown. As Delphine frets about that innocent child we keep getting flashes of her knowledge of sperm whales. We learn a lot about how they raise their calves and what they will do to try to protect them. It is one whale of a tale.

Credit: Contributed

Credit: Contributed