Anna, Like Thunder

PREFACE

In November 1808, the Russian ship St. Nikolai ran aground off the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula near present-day La Push, Washington. According to records, the twenty-two Russians aboard came to shore and were enslaved and traded among coastal First Nations until the survivors were rescued a year and a half later. One of the Russians was eighteen-year-old Anna Petrovna Bulygina, the wife of the navigator.

There are two written records of this incident. One comes from Russian fur trader Timofei Osipovich Tarakanov, who was the supercargo aboard the ship. After rescue, he related the story of his experiences to Navy Captain V.M. Golovnin, who wrote it down and published it in Russia in 1874. The second is a Quileute oral tradition that was told by elder Ben Hobucket to federal Indian service official Albert Reagan around 1909 and published in 1934. In 1985, the two accounts were published together as The Wreck of the Sv. Nikolai, edited and with an introduction by the late historian Kenneth N. Owens. Despite their origins, there is a remarkable level of concurrence between the two versions.

Anna is a minor character in both accounts, though she plays a pivotal role. During an attempted rescue, she refused help and instead encouraged her rescuers to surrender. This set off a series of events that today illuminate an important period of history on the coast of the Olympic Peninsula.

This novel explores Anna’s decision in the weeks before the event and the months that followed. This fictionalized version of what happened and why diverges at times from the written record, as she witnesses events from a vantage point not considered in historical documents. I’ve tried to remain faithful to the history as I understand it; nonetheless, this remains a work of fiction.