Blessing's Bead

Top Ten Historical Novels for Youth, Booklist

Top Ten First Novels for Youth, Booklist

Best Fiction for Young Adults, ALA/YALSA

Notable Books for a Global Society, IRA

Junior Library Guild selection

Now in paperback: the acclaimed middle-grade novel tracing four generations of an I?upiaq family in Alaska, which the Washington Post praised as a rare and beautiful book.

ALASKA, 1917

Nutaaq adores her older sister, Aaluk, and the happy world of their close-knit I?upiaq village. When Aaluk goes across the sea to marry a Siberian Inuit man, she gives Nutaaq a gift from her husband's people: two precious cobalt blue beads. Through the months that follow, as a great shadow falls over the village, the beads remind Nutaaq of the people she loves, and hold out hope that she might connect with her sister again.

ALASKA, 1989

Blessing's life in the city is unpredictable, with a mother who's sometimes wonderful and sometimes gone. When Mom finally can't take care of her anymore, Blessing is sent to live in a remote Arctic village with a grandmother she barely remembers. In her new home, unfriendly girls whisper in a language she doesn't understand, and Blessing feels like an outsider among her own people. Until she looks in her grandmother's sewing tin--and finds a cobalt blue bead.

How might Blessing discover her place in her family and community? And will Nutaaq's hope ever be fulfilled? Tracing four generations of bonds and breakage within one I?upiaq family, Blessing's Bead is a lovely and surprising novel about trauma, survival, and the healing power of culture and stories.