Review of Totem

[Milisandia]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Totem" by Charlie Sheldon.]

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4 out of 5 stars

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When hiking through the woods, I often wonder what it would be like to follow a deer trail and not a well-worn path. What must it have been like for the first people? I enjoyed reading Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children books, and other First Peoples books. I was hoping Totem (Strong Heart Series Book 3), by Charlie Sheldon, would be this kind of book.

The story centers around three groups of hikers that all happen to converge around Bear Valley in the Olympic Mountains, which is part of the Olympic National Park. There have been some unusual elk kills in the park. Carl, with Fish and Wildlife, and his niece Laurie are going to see if it was poachers or something else. Victoria Oldsea was going to take her son and his friend on a simple hike. Now she has been asked to go to the Bear Valley and check out her project for Buckhorn Industries, which has received a permit to mine erbium in a national forest. The erbium is part of an experiment to make coal burn cleanly. Sarah Cooley is going back to Bear Valley. She was there last summer and was lost for a time. She is taking her grandfather’s ashes to her ancestor’s burial site.

Do you have an animal that is your spirit guide? Is it a goat or a squirrel? Could it be a bear or wolf? Imagine seeing the world as the first people saw it and having a totem as your guide. Sarah had something happen to her in the novel that came before Totem. She and a few other people have had dreams. They were very accurate dreams about the world when the first people lived there. I find that fascinating and enjoy reading about those times.

This was the third book in the Strong Heart series. While it can be read as a stand-alone novel, there were many references to what happened before. Now I must go back and read the first two books. Oh, wait, that is not bad, is it?

Charlie Sheldon has spent a lot of time in the Olympic National Park in Washington State and knows the area well. He spent a great deal of time describing the mountainous regions and the paths the hikers took. I felt it slowed the pace down. For that reason, I give it a rating of 4 out of 5 stars . There were a few minor errors, but overall, it was very well-edited.

If you are interested in stories about indigenous people, the existence of spirit animals, and what life was like in prehistoric times and now, this book is for you. There was some violence and gore, but not enough to discourage me from reading.

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Totem
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