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| About the book | About the balloons | Discussion questions | How (and why) I wrote the book | Reviews & Press | Alaska Scrapbook | Past events |
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Set in past and
present Alaska, The Cloud Atlas is narrated by a missionary who
spent World War II chasing down one of Japan’s strangest weapons –
firebombs that silently crossed the Pacific, tethered to balloons. But
it’s the people he found who haunt him longer: a Yup’ik Eskimo woman, a
shaman, a boy.
In 1944-45, Louis Belk was a soldier, not a missionary, dispatched to find and dispose of these improbable weapons – Fu-Go weapons, or Japanese balloon bombs – and then keep them secret from an already anxious public. But the mysteries confronting Louis only increase when he meets his superior officer – a brutal veteran OSS spy hunter who knows all too well what the balloons can do – and a Yup’ik Eskimo woman who claims she can see the future. Chasing after the ghostly, floating weapons, Louis embarks upon an adventure that will lead him into the vast tundra, to a discovery and a choice that will change the course of his life. |