Guru's Path: How DRUM DANCE Was Born

Drum Dance* began as a sequel to my middle-grade novels—The Haunted Igloo and Spirit Lights—but I soon discovered that my young protagonist, David Jansson, had his own story to tell, and the novel evolved into a standalone story for older teens and adults.

An avid fan of Arctic stories, I wanted to explore the Hudson's Bay fur-trading posts in the Central Arctic, and learned there's very little information available for that time period. My contact at the Hudson's Bay Company (in Canada) located a few old, hand-written ship- and trading-post logs and bills of laden, as well as the name of the supply ship that serviced Gjoa Haven in the late 1930s.

My extensive research and the writing of Drum Dance was truly a labor of love with a strange feeling of magic. I know I wasn't there, yet somehow I was....

I hope readers enjoy David's story about his two years at a fur-trading post. While this isn't a true sequel to Spirit Lights, people who have read that book are going to get a huge surprise about halfway into this one, because it clears up an issue left hanging in the other book.

With climate change now altering the face of the Arctic—not to mention making life more difficult for the Inuits in their homeland—I feel it's important to preserve this information for future generations.