Sanaaq is the intimate story of an Inuit family negotiating the changes brought into their community by the coming of the qallunaat, the white people, in the mid-nineteenth century. Sanaaq, a strong and outspoken young widow, and her daughter, Qumac, hunt seal, repair their kayak, and gather mussels under blue sea ice before the tide comes in. Theirs is a semi-nomadic life on the edge of the ice where marriages are made and unmade, children are born, and violence appears in the form of a fearful husband or a hungry polar bear. Here the spirit world is alive and relations with...