Bird Girl & the Man Who Followed the Sun: An Athabaskan Indian Legend from Alaska

Velma Wallis tells a version of a Native American legend in Bird Girl: And the Man Who Followed the Sun. Her protagonists, the youth Daagoo and the maiden Jutthunvaar (known as Bird Girl), try to be free-spirited individualists in the bitter northern land near the Yukon, but they meet a harsh fate. Attempting to achieve the simple style so eloquent in folk tales, Wallis instead produces a dry, strangely affectless story.