# Help me identify this story I never read in high school! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 16, 2004, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-identify-this-story-i-never-read-in-high-school/260029 "2004-08-16T01:54:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2004, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-identify-this-story-i-never-read-in-high-school/260029/1 "2004-08-16T01:54:03Z")
I had just started reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ and kinda just blew off this reading assignment. Fifteen years later, that little bit of brain spackle just sticks in the wall of my mind, y’know? Now I wanna read it. It’s about a priest, who learns he’s going to die, and is given the advice to spend his last days with some native peoples… somewhere. He arrives where he’s going in a boat. I remember one plot point beyond that from a class discussion: a funny scene where the priest is chased around his lodgings by a bear. Can’t remember if this is a short story or novella. It was around 1989 when I was given the assignment; my guess is that it was an older story written some time before that. Nope, don’t remember the textbook, either. Goes without saying I don’t recall the author. Doubt if it was Hemngway or London, but I wouldn’t rule it out. Okay, Dopers. Time’s a-wasting. ---
**Author:** ![Julius\_Henry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8797f3/32.png) [@Julius\_Henry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Julius_Henry)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2004, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-identify-this-story-i-never-read-in-high-school/260029/2 "2004-08-16T02:52:24Z")
I didn’t read it either, but it kind of sounds like _I Heard the Owl Call My Name_. From [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0440343690/qid=1092624395/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-9343856-2764155?v=glance&s=books) > [@](#): > > A quiet, graceful testimonial to a vanishing way of life, I Heard the Owl Call My Name was Margaret Craven’s first book, written when she was sixty-nine. It tells of a young vicar named Mark, sent to a remote Kwakiutl village not knowing he has less than three years to live. In the village, Mark comes to understand the Kwakiutl Indians around him and sees how their traditions are being destroyed through the influence of white men. He watches the “English woman anthropologist” who comes to study the natives and insists upon calling the villagers “Quackadoodles;” he experiences the impact when the government declares it legal for Indians to buy liquor and when traders cheat the villagers out of their cultural treasures; he sees the children lose their ties with their families and heritage while living in residential schools among whites. In striking contrast to the avarice and arrogance of most whites is the selflessness of the Kwakiutls and the beauty of running salmon, tall trees, and tribal festivals. Mark becomes a part of the Kwakiutl world, learning its language and ways, until finally “Time had lost its contours. He seemed to see it as the raven or the bald eagle, flying high over the village, must see the part of the river that had passed the village, that had not yet reached the village, one and the same.” Gentle, full of profound philosophy, this is a book that both calms and disquiets, saddens and exhilarates. Seem familiar? ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2004, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-identify-this-story-i-never-read-in-high-school/260029/3 "2004-08-16T03:51:40Z")
I love this site. That’s it! I read part of the first page from Amazon’s Search Inside This Book feature. The language is a lot more sophisticated than I remembered it, so now I’m wondering if what was in the textbook was some sort of Reader’s Digest Condensed version or something. Thanks for clearing up that little mystery, **Julius.**