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Where Time is Round and Ravens Ride the Wind

Synopsis

A suicide epidemic in the Alaskan village Alakanuk frightens the Yup'ik Eskimos. The consequences of this disaster create a story of its own that intertwines the lives of two people with entirely different backgrounds, an Eskimo Elder of Russian descent and a German psychiatrist who have at first sight nothing in common and relate to each other in an antagonistic, prejudiced fashion.

Author Biography

Margret Berendes

From 1984 to 1987 I lived in the bush of Western Alaska. Employed as the Clinical Director of the Mental Health Department of the Yup’ik Eskimo Health Corporation in Bethel, I flew on a regular basis as a psychiatrist with a bush pilot to the Eskimo villages on the Bering Sea and in the interior of the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta and witnessed the painful struggle of human beings, who have to live between two cultures.

Several years ago, when I revisited the Delta area of Alaska, heart-rending memories of the suicide epidemic in a village on the Bering See - allegedly predicted by a woman shaman fifteen years earlier - came vividly alive. I suddenly felt impelled to recreate the powerful mood of this overwhelming experience in my past and write against this authentic background a novel with depth about a man and a woman of entirely different backgrounds who have to deal with this catastrophe. This work became Where Time is Round and Ravens Ride the Wind.

From 1988 to 1995, I worked as a psychiatrist not only in private practice but also at a mental health clinic in one of the poorest sections of Washington, D.C. My unbelievable experiences in that setting and the many unresolved questions about mental illness and what constitutes an effective treatment inspired me to write The Arabic Anka Pendant.