O. Henry Award winner. PEN/Hemingway runner up.

A TORTOISE FOR THE QUEEN OF TONGA features lush, poignant stories about the natural world. Drawing on twenty years' experience making nature documentaries, Whitty takes readers inside the minds of animals and people struggling to overcome their limitations. Stories have appeared in Harper's, Zoetrope, Story, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. 

A strikingly original book of short stories. Serious environmentalists are seldom noted for their sense of humor. this is not surprising, considering the serious mess we humans have got our planet into. Still, a little laughter can be healing. Julia Whitty is one of those who can provide it. The Washington Post

Whitty's prodigious natural talents: a supple biodiversity of language and an empathy for people and animals alike that puts most other writers in the shade. San Francisco Chronicle

This is short fiction with a long perspective, and several narratives encompass whole lifetimes... There's a message here about the havoc humankind has wrought on the natural world. But the stories' imaginative energy spring from Whitty's ability to enter unfamiliar realms, whether Tongan or reptilian, and make them feel the norm. There's a strong melody to her prose, a prankish humor and an exhilarating confidence in the way she makes vast leaps through time. The Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer

Ms. Whitty is an ecologist and filmmaker. She knows animals; she knows the Earth's remote and wild places. For fiction she mixes that impeccable authority with a lyrical imagination. The Dallas Morning News

With inexorable momentum, like the motion of the sea, accomplished documentary filmmaker Whitty impels the stories in her first collection through historic eras and the present time, illuminating the struggles of all living things, animal and human. In the title piece, she weaves together Captain Cook and Tonga history and royalty, but the story clearly belongs to Tu'i Malila, the two-century-old tortoise, stalwart companion to generations of Tonga queens. "Senti's Last Elephant" highlights the moral dilemma of an African guide, weary of all his kills, as he leads an American family through the dangerous land of a dying male elephant. This collection of ten elegant stories is an essential purchase. Library Journal (starred review)