Overall rating and opinion of "Strong Heart"

[Maris Charles M]

I am yet to finish this book. I will post another comment once i am done. So far i can say i am enjoying this book.

[Moneybag]

What I liked best about the book was Myra and Sergei's conflicts - the different things they believe in. I honestly felt they both were right. Myra believes the legends she grew up with are true because she believes they come from fact. Sergei, on the other hand, would prefer to wait on scientific evidence. From their perspectives, they were both right. However, what I didn't like about the book was how Sergei and Myra switched between belief and disbelief.
In the beginning, Myra believes Sarah about seeing the bear. And then she doesn't believe Sarah's story. Sergei meanwhile says he doesn't believe anything without scientific evidence and then believes Sarah's story and even defends it. I found this switch a little confusing.
Did anyone else feel the same way? Or did I miss some explanation in the book?

Interesting
I felt the same way

[Charlie Sheldon]

What I liked best about the book was Myra and Sergei's conflicts - the different things they believe in. I honestly felt they both were right. Myra believes the legends she grew up with are true because she believes they come from fact. Sergei, on the other hand, would prefer to wait on scientific evidence. From their perspectives, they were both right. However, what I didn't like about the book was how Sergei and Myra switched between belief and disbelief.
In the beginning, Myra believes Sarah about seeing the bear. And then she doesn't believe Sarah's story. Sergei meanwhile says he doesn't believe anything without scientific evidence and then believes Sarah's story and even defends it. I found this switch a little confusing.
Did anyone else feel the same way? Or did I miss some explanation in the book?

Interesting
I felt the same way

Myra supports Sarah when she sees the bear because she believes Sarah might have seen a real bear, but when Sarah comes back with this detailed story it is just too much a stretch for Myra. Seeing an animal that might have been drawn wrong, or might have been real but a genetic aberration, is far different than going back in time or recovering a detailed memory of an ancient age. In this book I had Myra as the tribal student and scholar who feels she lacks the real skills and training to stand with the "serious" scientists, plus she has grown up in a culture still close to the lost legends, language and beliefs. Sergei, on the other hand, while Koryak and in a sense "tribal" is from a tradition much more degraded than Myra's, much more subsumed into the Russian culture, from a people without reservations or language, and Sergei is a true Russian (whatever that means) in that he believes in science, study, and evidence. Sergei doesn't believe anything without evidence, not scientific evidence, and so he is intrigued that Sarah seems to have drawn an extinct animal, and then when she comes back from her disappearance with this story and with skills she somehow picked up as well, he considers this as evidence, and hence comes to believe her story might be real.
What I was trying to do with these two was establish a condition whereby the character most likely to believe Sarah because of her tradition struggles with it because of her drive to become a scholar and a professional and accepted as such, not to mention standing up to Sergei and being accepted by him as a peer; and another character who, despite his rigorous scientific training and approach, nevertheless is driven to crack open the gates of belief to consider the impossible......