Novel Title: Baffin Island
Time Setting: 2017
Genre: Thriller
Minimum Word Goal: 120,000
Timespan: July 1-21
Location: Baird Peninsula, Baffin Island, Nunavut
Main Character: Yukon Sarka
Background Information:
Conceived from a brief encounter between his parents, he lived a generally unstable life with his mother, mainly due to her alcoholism and resultant need for money to feed her addiction.
He was born in British Columbia, and lived there until he was three years old. His mother then learned that her father lived in Iqaluit in Nunavut, and moved them there, where the instability only increased.
His grandfather was a man of many women, and many of them, and many of his children by them, all lived in the same house. This was a significant stressor for him, but it was thankfully met with some relief.
His grandfather's sister and her husband lived just down the street, and offered a much more stable environment — much less one that had some peace and quiet — which led to him quickly spending a lot more time with them than with anyone else.
In fact, he spent so much time with his great aunt and uncle that they added a special bedroom for him onto the plans for the house they built when he was seven, and dedicated a lot of their time to caring for him and teaching him about his Inuit heritage.
When he was on the cusp of thirteen, however, things changed. After having spent the night with his great aunt and uncle, he went to school like any other day, only to be shortly summoned to the principal's office, where a police officer informed him that his mother had been killed.
His great aunt and uncle sought to have him put under their care, but probing by the government revealed that his mother had placed a name down for his father on is birth certificate. The man lived in Ontario and was contacted. He asked for a paternity test to be sure and the results came back that they were indeed father and son.
With the encouragement of his great aunt and uncle, he was sent to Ontario to meet his father, stepmother, and half siblings, and found that, despite his fears, his father was a nice man who was more than pleased not only to meet him, but to care about him.
His stepmother was overbearing in his mind, and his half siblings didn't really appreciate him all that much, most especially his older brother, but the loving care of his father has made up for the shortcomings of the rest of his family.
Having, still, a deep love and care for his great aunt and uncle, he has spent his summers with them, also appreciating the more rural atmosphere in Nunavut, and the ability to get out into nature much more than he has in Ontario.
After graduating high school he went into university for a wilderness-related degree; not that he's entirely sure what he's going to use it to do, but he has a deep love for nature and wishes to do something that allows him to be in the great, wild, untamed outdoors far more than indoors or in an urban environment.
In the last month he finally graduated from university, and to celebrate he has decided to go on a trip with his three closest friends from Ontario and his three closest friends from Nunavut, with the destination being the uninhabited Baird Peninsula on Baffin Island for two weeks of near-complete isolation from the outside world, which might possibly allow him to put his new education to use.
Pronunciations:
Nunavut: noonahvoot
Iqaluit: ihkahlooeet
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