"Wonderfully inventive ... a delightful tale that is subtle and outrageous in equal measure." —Publishers Weekly
"A funny debut novel ... wry, dry, pure hilarity all around." —Los Angeles Times
When John Jacobs, a mild-mannered suburban office worker, takes a DNA test and discovers that he is part-Inuit, he so embraces his new identity that he declares it his Inupiat tribal right to set forth on a whale hunt.
So begins this postmodern satire, a seriocomic, quirky adventure set in the oldest continuously settled town in North America, in the North Slope of Alaska, on the frozen Chukchi Sea, literally at the top of the world, where the inhabitants and their ancestors have depended on subsistence whaling for thousands of years.