EYE IN THE DARK Follows Modern Norwegian Vikings

It was a recurring dream. For 35 years, Hank Haraldsen thought only of the burning that was part of his ancestral Viking history. It had become an obsession, but the story began to explain his life.

In 'Eye in the Dark', author Peter Hansen introduces both ancient and modern Vikings. In ancient times, the reader witnesses a Viking funeral that ripples through life centuries later. In modern times, Norwegian Hank Haraldsen journeys to North America to discover the First Nations. Hank's wife, Emma, is a descendant of a slave fated to be burned in the Viking funeral. Hank's son, Isaac, 27 years later, travels to Canada to find his father, whom he has never met, in hopes of making sense of his own life. Isaac's son, Truls, wrestles with fallout from Hank's journey.

At the illegal Potlatch Dance in 1951, Emma dances a wild dance of which her ancestor would have been proud, but results in Hank's disappearance. Meanwhile, a Viking witch, gone for a thousand years, looks upon the living from the Land of the Dead. Emma and Isaac continue to hope that Hank is alive, and Hank wrestles with his ancestral history, beliefs, and spirituality.

Hansen explains, "I wrote this book to explore ideas about spirituality for the modern individual, who finds it hard to truly believe in religion because he/she has come to know too much about the world. I wanted to provide a story that would reconcile to ourselves this difficulty to believe, a story that would seek a personal myth that reflects a belief in self-development. My motivation was to work toward world peace by freedom of belief - to look at spiritual beliefs imaginatively, to replace the idea in history that someone has to die for what they believe in."

The author concludes the book with a bibliography intended as a beginning for readers interested in where historical fact ends and historical imagination begins. Hansen says, "The book is also about cultural preservation, about preservation of languages. It is feared that Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka'wakw or Kwak'wala), spoken by perhaps 200, will in a few decades time disappear unless something drastic is done. So much work has been done to preserve the language and legends by such American anthropologist greats as Franz Boas. Thus, a percentage of net book sales will be donated to Kwakiutl language development."

'Eye in the Dark' is published in eBook format by eBookIt.com and is now available from popular online retailers, including Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and Apple's iBookstore. It is also available in paperback on Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com.

About Peter Hansen
Peter was born in Port Alberni, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. In 1979, he obtained a B.Ed. from McGill University. He subsequently attended Oslo University on a Norwegian Government Scholarship. He has lived in Skarnes, Norway, close to the Finnish Woods. In 1983, he managed a federal program to provide urban First Nations Youth with cultural resources. After obtaining his LL.B. from the University of British Columbia in 1984, he has practiced law for 27 years in the greater Vancouver area. Married with three children, he lives in Port Moody, British Columbia. In the mornings, he reads Hebrew, which he studied upon the suggestion of his daughter, Jannah.

About eBookIt.com
Since 2010, eBookIt.com (based in Sudbury, Massachusetts) has helped thousands of authors and publishers get their books converted to ebook format, and distributed to all the major ebook retailers, including Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, Apple iBookstore, Kobo, Sony Readerstore, Ingram Digital, and Google eBookstore.

To post a comment, you must register and login.