Synopses & Reviews
Do we belong to the earth or does the earth belong to us? The question raised by Chief Seathl almost two centuries ago continues to be the defining quandary of the wet, wild rainforests along the shores of the Pacific Northwest. It seethes below the tides of the fictional town of good river harbor, a little village pressed against the mountains — homeland to bears, whales, and a few weather-worn families.
In Piano Tide, the debut novel by award-winning naturalist, philosopher, activist, and author Kathleen Dean Moore, we are introduced to town father Axel Hagerman, who has made a killing in this remote Alaskan harbor by selling off the spruce, the cedar, the herring, and halibut. But when he decides to export the water from a salmon stream, he runs head-long into young Nora Montgomery, just arrived on the ferry with her piano and her dog. Nora has burned her bridges in the lower 48, and she aims to disappear into this new homeland, with her piano as her anchor. But when Axel’s next business proposition, a bear pit, turns lethal, Nora has to act. The clash, when it comes, is a spectacular and transformative act of resistance.
Filled with music, rainwater, wildlife, and some of the oddest and most affable characters along this far shore, Moore weaves together the fecundity of the tides with a fiercely witty and deeply spirited story about the striving of all creatures for an enduring way of life.
Review
"Piano Tide captures with remarkable perception the beauty of Alaska, the environmental conflicts that tear at and unite communities, and the interconnectedness of all things. You’ll be swept into this world as if by a turning tide, and you will love the characters — human and otherwise — you find there. Moore writes from deep knowledge and empathy, with an open heart." Nancy Lord, author of Fishcamp, Beluga Days, and Early Warming, and former Alaska Writer Laureate
Review
"I think Kathleen Dean Moore can do anything — including write a savagely funny and deeply insightful novel of the tidepool and rainforest country she knows so well!" Bill McKibben author Eaarth
Review
"Piano Tide joins Ken Kesey’s Sailor Song as one of the great novels of Alaska and its convoluted coast and history. A small group of people making a life in a village by the sea: this is Kathy Moore’s canvas, and she paints a really beautiful, intense, funny and lively portrait of Nora and her new neighbors. How to live in this world? Moore lets us ponder this by way of a great story, in this marvelous debut novel." Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Years of Rice and Salt
Review
"This is award-winning naturalist, philosopher, and climate activist Moore’s first foray into fiction, and it is not only a remarkably thoughtful and compelling look at the threats to endangered species and the willful destruction of the environment but also a thoroughly engaging tale featuring vividly drawn characters who grab our interest from the very first pages... Moore writes so eloquently and with such passion about the natural world, from tiny tide pool inhabitants to giant grizzlies and towering hemlocks, that she leaves the reader in wonder and awe." Booklist (Starred Review)
About the Author
Kathleen Dean Moore is best known for her books of nature-focused essays — Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water, winner of the 1995 Pacific Northwest Book Award; Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World, recipient of the 1999 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award; The Pine Island Paradox, winner of the 2004 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction; and Wild Comfort, finalist for the same award. Her most recent publication is Great Tide Rising (Counterpoint, 2015). Moore writes from a small cabin where two creeks and a bear trail meet a tidal cove on Chichagof Island, Alaska.