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I Heard the Owl Call My Name

Margaret Craven

3.99 · Rating details · 6,387 ratings · 761 reviews

Amid the grandeur of the remote Pacific Northwest stands Kingcome, a village so ancient that, according to Kwakiutl myth, it was founded by the two brothers left on earth after the great flood. The Native Americans who still live there call it Quee, a place of such incredible natural richness that hunting and fishing remain primary food sources.

But the old culture of tote ...more

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Mass Market Paperback, 159 pages

Published January 15th 1980 by Laurel (first published 1967)

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May 05, 2018 Fergus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, inspirational

This book will stay with you as long as you live. I should know - I first read it nearly 60 years ago! I was a callow pre-teen.

To a kid like I was, life is getting things YOUR way. But the life we MUST learn to live is SHARING your life in ways that mean something to the ones with whom you share it.

So it is with young Father Mark. A stranger preaching a strange message of forgiveness to strangers, he must learn his lesson FAST and share it WELL... HIS OWN way!

Only a few years before I read this ...more

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Jul 14, 2013 Lynne King rated it it was amazing

Shelves: canada

Updated 22 July 2013

Well, I’ve reread this book that I first read so many years ago and I do believe, well perhaps there were one or two other books in the past that have had the same effect on me, that this is the first book that has left me with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I finished it. I went to bed and finally reread the end and thought my….what an incredible wonderful work!

This is such a simple story but it shines through with all the wonders of our life on this magnifice ...more

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Jun 16, 2019 Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, novel, fiction

"'Always when I leave the village,' the Bishop said slowly, ' I try to define what it means to me, why it sends me back to the world refreshed and confident. Always I fail. It is so simple, it is difficult. When I try to put it in to words, it comes out one of those unctuous, over-pious platitudes at which bishops are expected to excel.'
They both laughed.
'But when I reach here and see the great scar where the inlet side shows its bones, for a moment I know.'
'What, my lord?'
'That for me it has al "'Always when I leave the village,' the Bishop said slowly, ' I try to define what it means to me, why it sends me back to the world refreshed and confident. Always I fail. It is so simple, it is difficult. When I try to put it in to words, it comes out one of those unctuous, over-pious platitudes at which bishops are expected to excel.'
They both laughed.
'But when I reach here and see the great scar where the inlet side shows its bones, for a moment I know.'
'What, my lord?'
'That for me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world.'
'And that, my lord?'
'Enough of the meaning of life to be ready to die,'" (p.140).

That more or less sums up this wonderful little book - within the first couple of pages we are told that the Bishop knows that one of his priests, a young ordinand, is going to die of a terminal illness - the priest by the way does not know and does not realise the significance of what people have been saying to him or how they have been looking at him, until he hears the owl call his name as per the title - and so sends him to the remote parish of Kingcome in British Columbia to prepare him spiritually for his end.

God knows I am not a Christian nor even a believer, but all the same I was stung feeling the poignancy as I reached the end of the story, one of the characters blamed sea water in my eyes, I had got sun cream into my own.

There is a unity of form of subject - the story seems to be told in the manner of one of the oral tales of the Dzawa̱da̱'enux̱w tribe (Kwakwakaʼwakw nation), it is laconic and centres on actions. The life of a Priest even in British Columbia is not exactly fast paced, so the story unfolds into a different sense of time, it must be set in the mid 1960s - it was first published in 1968 - but despite the changing seasons (most of which seem to be different kinds of rainy season) and the round of the school year much of the noise of the human world is stilled so that eventually having observed the life cycle of the salmon the priest is able to hear the owl call his name, not in despair or in joy, but simply to recognise it for what it is.

The people of the parish are wary of the priest, a story in this book is how they grow to accept each other, priest and people, it is not clear if they are Christians or if Christianity is another aspect to their traditional beliefs, towards the end many of the church goers are described as agnostics and atheists - but they still go to church, which possibly is a very Anglican (Episcoplian) thing to to do.
A great book, the best I have read for a while. ...more

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Mar 18, 2017 Manybooks rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, first-nations-native-american-metis, childrens-literature, book-reviews, favourites-read

When we read Margaret Craven's brilliant and evocative I Heard the Owl Call My Name in junior high (and I would consider I Heard the Owl Call my Name while not perhaps suitable for young readers, definitely both appropriate and fitting for anyone above the age of twelve or so), I just and mainly enjoyed and appreciated the author's narrative as a heart-warming and in many ways also heart-wrenching reading experience (both sweet and sad at the same time, with a text that has the power to envelop, When we read Margaret Craven's brilliant and evocative I Heard the Owl Call My Name in junior high (and I would consider I Heard the Owl Call my Name while not perhaps suitable for young readers, definitely both appropriate and fitting for anyone above the age of twelve or so), I just and mainly enjoyed and appreciated the author's narrative as a heart-warming and in many ways also heart-wrenching reading experience (both sweet and sad at the same time, with a text that has the power to envelop, to make one think, to make one laugh and also, and finally, to make one cry, but with tears that are nevertheless and all the same cleansing, healing and optimistic).

And rereading this novel, rereading I Heard the Owl Call my Name as an adult and for the first time in decades, and as an increasingly critical peruser who has recently become painfully aware of the fact that there has been and continues to be rather much patronising stereotyping and cultural appropriation with regard to Native American and Native Canadian culture, lore and thematics, and this is especially and even seemingly regularly the case with regard to literature for children and young adults penned by authors who are NOT of aboriginal, not of Native American or Canadian background, I have now and with increasing pleasure realised just how special and in many ways avant-guarde Margaret Craven's writing in I Heard the Owl Call my Name truly is. For the author has definitely and with grace, beauty and above all truth portrayed the lives of a people, not her own (with that I mean, not of her own ethnic and cultural background).

When Mark Brian (a young vicar who is dying but unaware of this fact) is sent by his bishop (who has been informed of Mark's condition by the doctor but has chosen not to let Mark know) to minister to the Kwakiutl village of Quee (which the whites have named Kingcome), he encounters beauty, tradition and ceremony and a generation of young men and women who have become both alienated and increasingly suspicious. And it is here, it is in Quee that Mark learns how to both live and die with compassion, understanding and commitment (he was sent to minister to the residents of Quee, but it is actually more the other way around, in so far that is is they who minister to Mark, who teach him and prepare him for both life and death). A book of great beauty, with a simple, but never simplistic, spare and entrancing writing style, I Heard the Owl Call my Name has much to tell, much to teach, and without moralising, without polemic!

Now while the main plot line of I Heard the Owl Call my Name is of course Mark Brian's journey to greater understanding and being prepared for not only the act of living but also of dying, Margaret Craven's narrative clearly always or at least mostly sympathises with the villagers. With a great deal of humour she describes how the villagers take their own small revenge on an individual they at first consider nothing but an intruder by feeding him foods they know he does not really like (like mashed turnips), and at least in the beginning continuously gossip about Mark's looks, his refined manners and that he will likely not be adept at either hunting or fishing. And while Mark in the end turns out to be the very opposite of an intruder (that he both becomes part of the village and actually even dies as a villager, as an accepted inhabitant and resident of Quee), Craven clearly and succinctly demonstrates that the villagers' original suspicions of Mark and their negative attitudes towards him are more than well-founded (from painful past experiences with non Native Canadian, non Aboriginal individuals, such as the British anthropologist who insists on calling the people of Quee Quackadoodles to the local teacher who despises them for being Native Canadian and who only accepted the posting because of the isolation pay being offered). And at the end of the novel, at the end of I Heard the Owl Call my Name, both Mark and the villagers have in many ways become one, have become joined and after his death, the villagers regard him as one of their own (and they lay him to rest in the village that has become Mark's home and the villagers his tribe, his people). Highly recommended! ...more

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May 02, 2020 Ingrid rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

What a beautiful story! It feels as if I've watched a film, but then a film could never compete with the book. I loved it. ...more

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Aug 04, 2018 Jeanette rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The depth and majesty of this telling is only equal to its superb "eyes" for those of the tribe who live in the village of Kingcome.

The natural world of the inlets of British Columbia and the path of Mark, the new vicar- are far, far beyond what only the eyes can see and the words describe.

Classic. If it is not, than it absolutely should be.

Would that all endings could be as worthy and dramatic as Mark's. And the acceptances of change, yet without a moment's forgetting of a giving respect and ...more

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Jul 14, 2018 Laura Anne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: native-american

Such a pleasure to find this. So many books I no longer own - due to moving, life etc. I think this one passed to my mother; because I remember her saying how much she like it too.

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Dec 05, 2019 Tara Rock rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A beautiful gem of a story. Many thanks to my Goodreads Friends who led me to this; I would miss a lot of good reading without you. I don't re-read many books, but this will be the exception. ...more

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Apr 18, 2019 Susan's Reviews rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This was required reading in middle school. I loved it at the time, although I know now that this does not tell a complete story of Canada's and the church's abysmal treatment of Native Indians. The young Anglican vicar's death at the end of the story was very moving, and I suspect it taught us young readers to have more of a reverence for the here and now, and for life in general. I will never forget the advice Mark gave to some young students who were going to be integrated into a non-native s ...more

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Mar 20, 2017 Chrissie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: audible, classics, 2017-read, kids, life-stages, canada, native-am, religion, returned

I found the topics discussed to be all too simplified. The themes are life, death and friendship as well as how modern life is a threat to the traditions and culture of the First Nation people in Canada.

Through the author's writing I did not perceive the beauty of the land. Nature writing is a theme I enjoy, but I personally didn't find it here. The language is flat.

A character in the book is to die, and the way this is treated is not direct enough for me. Heap on the problems. Don’t give me th ...more

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Sep 25, 2011 Karyn Huenemann rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is one of the most powerful novels of the First Nations people I have ever read. The natives of Kingcome, where the novel is set, agree with this assessment. Surprisingly, it was written by a female American journalist who spent only 5 weeks living in Kingcome. Her imagination was captured by a report about Eric Powell, an Anglican priest who was sent to teach the natives in Kingcome but, by his own report, instead learned much from them about the peace that their culture brings to them—and ...more

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Sep 23, 2014 BrokenTune rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, canada

"She waited as if she had waited all her life, as if she were part of time itself, gently and patiently. Did she remember that in the old days the Indian mother of the Kwakiutl band who lost a child kicked the small body three times and said to it, 'Do not look back. Do not turn your head. Walk straight on. You are going to the land of the owl'?"

I was recommended this book for my Canada project. Although written by an American, the story is set in British Columbia and tells of a young vicar wh ...more

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Jan 03, 2010 Lobstergirl rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, vacation-reads, read-more-than-once

I needed something short and quick to read and picked this up when I saw it at the library. I think I read it in junior high, although I may be confusing it with Hal Borland's When the Legends Die (both are books about Indians in the woods). It's a sweet, sad story about a young vicar with a terminal disease (which he is unaware of) who is sent to a parish in remote coastal British Columbia. No matter how much he does for the Indians, he is told, they will never say "thank you," because they hav ...more

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Sep 25, 2017 Wanda rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: blast-from-the-past, female-authors, public-library, read-in-2017

This was a re-read for me, but it might as well have been my first time, I remembered so little. Mind you, I think I was in my teens when I read it the first time. My only memory of it was a feeling of melancholy.

The young vicar, Mark, is sent to the Kwakiutl village of Kingcome by his bishop, who knows Mark has a terminal illness, but chooses not to tell him. In our 21st century culture of consent, this just wouldn’t happen anymore. No doctor worth his or her salt would let a patient out of the ...more

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Jul 17, 2018 Roger Brunyate rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: canada, illustrated-review, place-portraits

The Swimmer's Season

      The young vicar stopped his patching and descended the ladder.
      "Chief Eddy," he said earnestly, "there is something I have been meaning to ask you. How do you pronounce the name of your tribe?" It is spelled Tsawataineuk.
      "Jowedaino."
      There was a silence.
      "Would you mind saying it again?"
      "Jowedaino," and Mark listened more carefully than he had ever listened to any work in his entire life and could not tell if the word was Zowodaino or Chow

The Swimmer's Season

      The young vicar stopped his patching and descended the ladder.
      "Chief Eddy," he said earnestly, "there is something I have been meaning to ask you. How do you pronounce the name of your tribe?" It is spelled Tsawataineuk.
      "Jowedaino."
      There was a silence.
      "Would you mind saying it again?"
      "Jowedaino," and Mark listened more carefully than he had ever listened to any work in his entire life and could not tell if the word was Zowodaino or Chowudaino.
      "And the name of the band to which your tribe belongs?" which in the books of anthropology is written Kwakiutl.
      "Kwacutal," and Mark listened and could not tell if the word was Kwagootle, Kwakeetal or Kwakweetul.
      "And the name of the cannibal who lived at the north end of the world?"
      "Bakbakwalanuksiwae," and it came from the chief's lips like a ripple.

American author Margaret Craven (1901–80) first heard about the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) culture on the coast of British Columbia from her brother, who had visited there, and arranged with the Columbia Coast Mission of the Anglican Church to see for herself. The immediate result was this short novel, published in Canada in 1967 to great acclaim, and in the US in 1973. In that it is fiction, the story is quietly affecting. But you also see the non-fiction writer building on her travel journal, compiling native legends and traditions, and making a plea for the preservation of a First Nation culture that was quickly being obliterated by the modern world. Both elements have their place, but they do not necessarily combine into a strong novel.

Approaching Kingcome village

The premise is artificial but effective. A doctor tells a bishop that a young ordinand has less than three years to live, though he does not know it. The bishop decides not to tell the young vicar, in case it should make him try too hard, but sends him to the parish where he feels he will learn most quickly: the village of Kingcome, at the head of the Kingcome Inlet off Queen Charlotte Sound. The young vicar, whose name is Mark Brian, is given an Indian boatman to look after him for the first year. He sails upriver to his new parish, where he finds the people welcoming but both vicarage and church in poor repair. What follows is much like an Anglican version of Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop moved to the Pacific Northwest. Mark is naive but touchingly humble. For example, when the bishop offers to send him a prefabricated vicarage to replace the old one, he defers, preferring first to make the repairs with his own hands. When the new building does arrive a year or two later, all the men in the village now turn out to help him, for he has won their trust and in all sorts of ways made himself part of their lives.

Kingcome church today

Although Mark is an Anglican vicar, religion is not a major theme of this book, but as much the background to his life as are the forests and mountains surrounding the village. He does not waste time thinking whether the ancient ceremonies and totems conflict with the Christian faith, but celebrates their importance to the tribe. When a young woman returns from the outside world pregnant with the child of her former boyfriend who has decided to remain there, Mark replies, "What you have done is strange to me, but I think I understand it"—which is, of course, to return part of the heritage to the village that gave them birth. Perhaps Mark is too good to be true, and the Biblical simplicity of the writing often reads more like fable than modern fiction, sometimes requiring a little indulgence from the reader.

Yet fables are the lifeblood of the culture, expressing the people's connection to life, death, and the animals, trees, and mountains around them. We hear the legend of the owl calling a person's name just before he is to die. We hear stories of the life-cycle of the salmon, which they call "The Swimmer." And it will be in terms of the Swimmer's end in some rock pool, its work of propagation done, that Mark's death will be evoked in the final pages. The two paragraphs I have chosen as my final quote come a little before the end, and do not include this specific image, but they do show Margaret Craven's writing at its simple best:

Soon the huge flights of snow geese would fly over the river on their way back to the nesting place, the spring swimmer woulf come up the river to the Clearwater, and on the river pairs of cocky, small, red-necked sawbills would rest, the father flying off when Mark passes and the mother pretending she had broken a wing to lead him awaw from her little ones. And each would feel the pull of the earth and know his small place upon it, as did the Indian in his village.
He went slowly up the river. In front of the vicarage he anchored the boat and waded ashore. He trudged up the black sands to the path and stopped. From the dark spruce he heard an owl call—once, and again—and the questions that had been rising all day long reached the door of his mind and opened it.

...more

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Sep 22, 2013 Rhea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Rhea by: School

Shelves: favorites, genre-historical, classics, 5-stars-amazingness, genre-literary

5 stars for teaching me about Life.

I'm so happy they made us read this in 6th grade! Of course, that meant that only two other people liked it (I'm weird, aren't I? Everyone loved The Hobbit but me and no one loved this book but me.)

In its pages, I glimpsed something magical and meaningful, some truth about life. I think it helped shape who I am, at least a little. ...more

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Sep 14, 2015 Deborah Pickstone rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: belief-and-anti-belief, ethical-issues, human-nature, makes-me-think, other-cultures, anthropomorphic, myth-and-legend, made-me-cry, geocaching, history-of-all-things

A rather enchanting and beautiful story that captures both the vicar's thinking and the tribe's, somehow, in the words used. The language is spare and to the point - carved into a story like one of the masks. The Bishop is astonishingly wise, which is a bit hard to credit (Bishops being usually administrative rather than pastorally talented in my experience). But he had done his time there also.

I cried at the end - not a common event for me. I was completely taken by surprise by the people's acc ...more

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Jan 31, 2019 Camie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is a classic work of fiction by an American journalist who lived for a time among the Indians of the small remote village of “Kingcome” on the coast of British Columbia, and wrote this book at the age of 69 in 1967.
The story follows young Vicar Mark Brian as he’s chosen by the Bishop who knows him to be terminally ill and who decides to provide an experience that will most enrich his last years which is to labor among the Indians who still live in the village unspoiled by civilization. Of c ...more

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Apr 29, 2015 Karen Witzler rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: canada, read-in-high-school-1970-s, 1000-mustich

Read 40 years ago. I liked it at the time, though now details are hazy, except that there was sadness, melancholy, inevitable loss. I remember thinking that this was unfair.

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Feb 11, 2020 Jen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book was written in the 1970s about a tribe of what were then called "Indians" in the Pacific Northwest. So the terminology in it isn't 2020s "PC". I read this from that POV, so it didn't upset me.

Which is a good thing, because the writing was so GORGEOUS. It was lyrical and poetic and evocative and just so PERFECT. It took me to that time and place. I was there in the cold and the heat, with the flies and the birds and just NATURE, as well as the people in it.

My favorite place on Earth i ...more

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Sep 28, 2019 SoulSurvivor rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: almost-favorite, highland-library, highly-recommended, worth-your-consideration

I really wanted to give this book 5-stars , but there was a personal sadness to it and I won't read it again (one of my criteria for highest rating) ; I also won't recommend it to friends that will not appreciate the nuances . It was marvelously written and raised a rainbow of emotions for me .

My sadness was because in my formative years I had a number of friends who descended from the Cornplanter Indian tribe , part of the Seneca group , itself one of five tribes comprising the Iroquois nation ...more

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Jan 03, 2014 Namita rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-favorites

This is the best book ever. I read it back in high school a long long time ago. It is a power novel that had me crying by the end of the. I remember my entire class sitting in pin drop silence when the teacher finished reading. I highly recommend this book. As I said, the best book.

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Jun 28, 2019 TBV (on hiatus) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, fiction, canada

The reader knows from page one that the young Vicar Mark Brian is doomed to die from a disease that he is as yet unaware of. The bishop who knows about Mark's impending death wisely sends him to Kingcome (Quee in the local tongue), a remote village in British Columbia. As the novel progresses it becomes apparent why the decision is a wise one.

This is how the First Nation inhabitants regard their village: “His village is not the strip of land four miles long and three miles wide that is his as lo ...more

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Jan 02, 2017 Ivan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is a fifty year old book (published first in 1967 in Canada), and I know it has sold a few million copies and that I am coming to the party late. However, this book touched me profoundly. It's where I am in my life presently - longing for a simpler, more meaningful existence, making a spiritual connection with people and the world I live in. There is a sadness that permeates this material - it anticipates and mourns the passing away of old ways and traditions, and looks ahead with resignati ...more

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Dec 05, 2011 MsAprilVincent rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

The more I think about it, the more I really like this book. It's about a priest who goes up north to serve a parish that consists of several Indian villages. He doesn't turn native, he doesn't try to turn them white, and he doesn't fall in love with an Indian maiden. He is really very Christlike in his approach: he lives among the people, respects them, helps them out, and loves them. It's beautiful. ...more

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Jan 18, 2011 Jacob rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Craven's simple spiritual style is vaguely reminiscent of Hermann Hesse's writing. She captures the spirit of the Kwakiutl, both people and landscape, with a similarly quiet intensity.

The story itself is one of a young Anglican priest named Mark who is sent to a remote native village on the British Columbian coast after he is diagnosed with only a couple of years to live. He is not aware of it at the time and sets about trying to win the respect of the people whom he must tend to.

I was drawn in ...more

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Dec 26, 2012 Jocelyn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

An Anglican bishop sends a young priest to a remote First Nation village in northwest Canada. The priest is terminally ill but he doesn't know it yet. (He has trageditis, the same mysterious disease that killed Beth March along with numerous Dickens characters.) I think his story turns out to be our own. God sends us into a strange world. We have a choice. Will we be like the Mountie, the teacher, the tourists, and the anthropologist who care only for their own interests and lack any empathy wit ...more

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Aug 25, 2019 Elinor rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is such a beautiful little book -- right down to the title and the cover (I read the first hardcover edition that I picked up at a garage sale, published in 1967) -- that I must give it five stars in spite of understandable concerns about the portrayal of the indigenous community based at Kingcome, British Columbia. I'm trying to review it based in its own time, and in that light it was a sensitive, thoughtful portrayal of how the native people were losing their culture fifty years ago. One ...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: jo

Shelves: maple-flavoured, idle-no-more, novellas, the-missionary-position

Lovely. A welcome counterpoint to the more politically-charged First Nations' novels I've been reading so much of lately. Sad, but not angry. Reminded me of Cather's Death Comes For The Archbishop--similarly episodic, lyrical and atmospheric. A gorgeous read and a very sympathetic priest whose relationship with the Kwakiutl tribe on the coast of BC, (view spoiler) whom he lives with, learns about, and loves, could have been a cliché but avoids it by bei ...more

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Oct 19, 2016 Sonya rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A wonderful historical book about the life and beliefs of the indigenous people in British Columbia and the encroaching Western world. This was like reading poetry mixed with philosophy and religion. An easy short read with a lot of depth. (This was one of the few books I remember my mother reading. She loved it. At the time she worked at SeaTac airport and in the 70's it was infused with Native American decor and the gift shops were filled with those types of items as souvenirs. Sort of brings ...more

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About Margaret Craven

Margaret Craven

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Margaret Craven (March 13, 1901 – July 19, 1980) was an American author.

(from Wikipedia)

Books by Margaret Craven

Livros Condensados: Por toda a cidade; A canção dos elefantes; Segredos; Ouvi a coruja chamar por mim

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“Here every bird and fish knew its course. Every tree had its own place upon this earth. Only man had lost his way.” — 40 likes

“He watched their faces, and he knew each meant desperately what she said because they loved each other, and deep inside surely each knew the words were false, that the true words were those unspoken.” — 12 likes

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Preview — I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven

I Heard the Owl Call My Name

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