Dance-water blue
Date
1988
Authors
Connolly, Jay
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Dinosaurs are extinct, right? Wrong -- not in the tiny, half-deserted mining town of Stuart's Landing on Okanagan Lake. Naitaka -- an ancient and deteriorating plesiosaur, known popularly as "Ogopogo" -- has visited this dwindling community several times over the years.
Brady Stuart was fifteen the first time he saw Naitaka, and the experience touched him so deeply that the creature's subsequent fifty-year absence has left Brady a dislocated man. Despite evidence that Naitaka is less than benevolent, Brady has done what he can to protect the creature from fortune hunters; he has even closed the mine above the Landing because he believes that the inexplicable shaft of water at the end of one of the tunnels might be Naitaka's secret home. Because of the mine-closure and the consequent economic strife, however, the people of Stuart's Landing want Naitaka for t heir own. Benton Williams, hardware king and ex-MLA, has lured the mysterious Bar Cranston and his company, Voyageur Expeditions, to the Landing to look for the creature. If they find Naitaka, they plan to put him in a n aquarium-like tank on the south side of the Landing, thereby providing themselves with a remarkable tourist-draw -- a phenomenal attraction that will bring Stuart's Landing back to life. Both in spite of and because of his wife's intense fear of Naitaka, Brady commits himself to fighting Voyageur Expeditions.
On their side, Bar Cranston and the town have a fleet of high-tech search-boats and a sonar-equipped mini-submarine. On Brady's side is Roy Silverheels, a spirited young Indian who cannot seem to keep himself out of trouble but will not, for his own reasons, abandon Brady and his fight. Through Roy's allegiance to Brady and his own determination to discover some form of truth about his Indian culture, Roy teaches his father, a disgruntled alcoholic with a fierce belief in the irrelevance of his own people, something about the dignity of their shared past.
If home is the emotional/psychological state where we feel comfortable with our circumstances and our histories, then these characters -- Naitaka included -- are homeless; but each of them is searching for a way out of isolation. When Brady finds Naitaka, sick and apparently half-starved, at the desolate north end of the lake, he decides on a plan. Using a fibreglass decoy they have built in Brady's workshop, Brady and Roy stage an attack - a bloody and presumably fatal mauling -- at one of the busiest beaches in the valley's biggest city. But part of the plan back-fires, and Brady finds himself naked, alone, amnesiac and trapped in a cave by Naitaka. Later, after being driven into another cave, Brady discovers both his father's bones and an entirely new perspective on Naitaka. Finally, at the end of his life-long search for this strange, pre-historic creature, Brady is forced to admit that his view of Naitaka has been naive and narrow, and he decides to turn him over to Bar Cranston.
Dance-water Blue explores the relationships between these individuals and the relationships between these individuals and Naitaka, the extraordinary aspect of their private and collective realities. There may not be answers, the novel tells us, but there are ways of approaching home, or, at least, there are ways of coming to, or making, a new home.