Solar Storms

In Solar Storms, 17-year-old Angel Wing travels in 1972 to the northern ancestral lands of her estranged mother and grandmothers. Abandoned by her abusive mother, Hannah, and raised in the foster system, Angel seeks to understand where she comes from. Her face is covered in scars that she knows came from Hannah’s physical abuse, but Angel doesn’t remember the abuse itself. Still, the lingering effects of the trauma Angel experienced are profound, as…

Seventeen-year-old Angel Wing returns for the first time to the site of her birth in Solar Storms, having been separated from her family at a young age and placed into foster care. She has spent her life moving from one home and family to another, her sense of self fundamentally shaped by this rootlessness. Her attempt to contact her estranged grandmother, Agnes Iron, sparks her journey northward toward Adam’s Rib, and eventually farther…

In Solar Storms, 17-year-old Angel Wing returns to Adam’s Rib for the first time since she was a baby. Before her return, she never understood that she had a natural gift for working with plants and herbs. She never saw how closely connected she was to the land, or to the history of her own ancestors. But through her pilgrimage to a northern Native community known as the Fat-Eaters, as she and her grandmothers…

When Angel Wing returns to her ancestral homeland in Solar Storms, she discovers it is under the active threat of colonization. The Canadian government is building a series of dams without the input of the Native people, diverting ancient rivers and flooding long-standing lands and communities. Although Angel has no conscious relationship with her homeland, she is tied to it in ways that transcend conscious awareness. Throughout the novel, Hogan frames Native spirituality as…