Boston: Beacon Press, 2013. Octavo, paperback, black and white illustrations, maps.

Science entwines with emotion as a whale researcher chronicles the lives of an endangered family of orcas. Eva Saulitis began her whale research in Alaska in the 1980s, chronicling the lives of a single extended family of endangered orcas struggling to survive in Prince William Sound. Over the course of a decades-long career spent observing and studying these whales, and eventually coming to know them as individuals, she has, sadly, witnessed the devastation wrought by the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989--after which not a single calf has been born to the group. With the intellectual rigor of a scientist, Saulitis gives voice to these vital yet vanishing survivors and the place they are so loyal to. Both an elegy for one orca family and a celebration of the entire species, this book is a moving portrait of the interconnectedness of humans with animals and place and of the responsibility we have to protect them. Also available in hardcover [stock id 36940].