On a fog-bright river between kelp and rookery, two houses learn to keep peace where law can be seen.

When a Wolf house matriarch—the Sigidimnak'—and a sea-side k'uuljaad agree to cool a generations-long border quarrel, the work happens in public: witnesses fed first, copper cooled with grease, stones planted where water tells the truth. Across a year of fish runs and storms, gunboat visits and fort rules, a marriage is brokered, captives are brought home, and a bar-pole rises to mark the truce.

Told through speeches, ceremonies, and the quiet labor that keeps houses upright, Stones of Grease is a slow-burn novel of matrilineal leadership, repair, and responsibility on the northern Northwest Coast in the mid-nineteenth century. It centers Indigenous law-in-public—where mistakes are corrected so people stay useful—and the rooms where art, memory, and governance live together.

This is a story of aunties and envoys, of teaching canoes and grease trails, of boys learning to keep powder behind words, and of a community choosing work over noise.

Perfect for readers of layered historical fiction who want ceremony treated with care—and a coastline rendered with precision and respect.