Talking Location With …. Sarah Holding: ICELAND
Ten Great Books set in ALASKA
15th May 2023
Ten Great Books set in Alaska. Alaska, the largest U.S. state, is a land of immense beauty and contrasts. Its vast wilderness, characterized by towering mountain ranges like the Alaska Range, vast glaciers, and dense forests, remains largely untouched. The state is home to iconic wildlife, including grizzly bears, moose, and bald eagles, thriving in their natural habitats. Alaska’s coastline, with its countless fjords and islands, is a haven for marine life, such as whales and sea otters. The state’s rich history is deeply intertwined with its indigenous cultures and the gold rush era. A place of extremes, Alaska experiences long, dark winters and summers filled with near-endless daylight, a testament to its dramatic northern latitude.
Here are ten of our favourite books set in the State.
Song of the Yukon by Trisha Sugarek
Alaska was calling! LaVerne’s dream was to follow the poet Robert Service’s footsteps to the wilds of Alaska. At sixteen she was already writing her own music and believed that her talent could only flourish on the back trails of the Yukon. In 1921, at seventeen, she leaves her home in Tumwater, Washington in the middle of the night and alone. Impersonating a boy, she hires aboard a freighter, out of Seattle, and works her way to the north.
From boat rides on the Yukon, encounters with a native tribe, fighting off male suitors to filing homestead papers, falling in love, and working the land, LaVerne uses newfound frontier wisdom as a basis for expanding both her music and her perceptions. Black-eyed Joe, a native of Alaska told her, “No man owns what Mother Spirit does not freely give”. “What a charming folk tale, LaVerne thought. I could use the story in one of my songs.”
It was in Alaska she learns the realities of frontier life that will shape her future, help her create music, and lead her in directions no woman has explored alone before.
This compelling historical fiction book is based on the true-life story of the author’s Aunt LaVerne. Perfect for anyone who enjoys adventure, the outdoors, tales of survival and triumph against the odds.
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
Alaska, 1974. Untamed. Unpredictable. A story of a family in crisis struggling to survive at the edge of the world, it is also a story of young and enduring love.
Cora Allbright and her husband Ernt, a recently-returned Vietnam veteran scarred by the war, uproot their thirteen year old daughter Leni to start a new life in Alaska. Utterly unprepared for the weather and the isolation, but welcomed by the close-knit community, they fight to build a home in this harsh, beautiful wilderness.
At once an epic story of human survival and love, and an intimate portrait of a family tested beyond endurance, The Great Alone offers a glimpse into a vanishing way of life in America. With her trademark combination of elegant prose and deeply drawn characters, Kristin Hannah has delivered an enormously powerful story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the remarkable and enduring strength of women.
About the highest stakes a family can face and the bonds that can tear a community apart, this is a novel as spectacular and powerful as Alaska itself. It is the finest example of Kristin Hannah’s ability to weave together the deeply personal with the universal.
The Wind is Not a River by Brian Payton
April 1943. In the bloody turmoil of war, John Easley, a journalist mourning his lost brother, is driven to expose a hidden and growing conflict: the Japanese invasion and occupation of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. But when his plane is shot down he must either surrender or struggle to survive in a harsh wilderness.
Three thousand miles to the south, Helen Easley cannot accept her husband’s disappearance-an absence that exposes her sheltered, untested life. Desperate to find and be reunited with him, she sets out on a remarkable journey from the safety of her Seattle home to the war in the north.
An evocative, richly atmospheric tale of life and death, commitment and sacrifice, The Wind Is Not a River, perfect for fans of Cold Mountain, is a gripping story of survival that illuminates the fragility of life and the fierce power of love.
No Fixed Line by Dana Stabenow
… though there is no fixed line between wrong and right,
There are roughly zones whose laws must be obeyed.
It is New Year’s Eve, nearly six weeks into an off-and-on blizzard that has locked Alaska down, effectively cutting it off from the outside world.
But now there are reports of a plane down in the Quilak mountains. With the National Transportation Safety Board unable to reach the crash site, ex-Trooper Jim Chopin is pulled out of retirement to try to identify the aircraft, collect the corpses, and determine why no flight has been reported missing. But Jim discovers survivors: two children who don’t speak a word of English.
Meanwhile, PI Kate Shugak receives an unexpected and unwelcome accusation from beyond the grave, a charge that could change the face of the Park forever.
The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton
On 24th November Yasmin and her deaf daughter Ruby arrive in Alaska.
Within hours they are driving alone across a frozen wilderness
Where nothing grows
Where no one lives
Where tears freeze
And night will last for another fifty-four days.
They are looking for Ruby’s father.
Travelling deeper into a silent land.
They still cannot find him.
And someone is watching them in the dark.
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
A bewitching tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska and inspiration from a Russian fairytale
Jack and Mabel have staked everything on making a fresh start for themselves in a homestead ‘at the world’s edge’ in the raw Alaskan wilderness. But as the days grow shorter, Jack is losing his battle to clear the land, and Mabel can no longer contain her grief for the baby she lost many years before.
The evening the first snow falls, their mood unaccountably changes. In a moment of tenderness, the pair are surprised to find themselves building a snowman – or rather a snow girl – together. The next morning, all trace of her has disappeared, and Jack can’t quite shake the notion that he glimpsed a small figure – a child? – running through the spruce trees in the dawn light. And how to explain the little but very human tracks Mabel finds at the edge of their property?
Cold Storage, Alaska by John Straley
Cold Storage, Alaska, is a remote fishing outpost where you just might catch a King Salmon if you’re zen enough to wait for it. Clive ‘The Milkman’ McCahon returns to his tiny Alaska hometown after a seven-year jail stint for dealing coke. He has a lot to make up to his younger brother, Miles, who has dutifully been taking care of their ailing mother. But Clive doesn’t realise the trouble he’s bringing home. He’s reformed now, but his vengeful old business partner is hot on his heels, a stick-in-the-mud State Trooper who’s dying to bust Clive for narcotics
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
What would possess a gifted young man recently graduated from college to literally walk away from his life? Noted outdoor writer and mountaineer Jon Krakauer tackles that question in his reporting on Chris McCandless, whose emaciated body was found in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992.
Described by friends and relatives as smart, literate, compassionate and funny, did McCandless simply read too much Thoreau and Jack London and lose sight of the dangers of heading into the wilderness alone? Krakauer, whose own adventures have taken him to the perilous heights of Everest, provides some answers by exploring the pull the outdoors, seductive yet often dangerous, has had on his own life.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
What if, as Franklin Roosevelt once proposed, Alaska – and not Israel – had become the homeland for the Jews after the Second World War? In Michael Chabon’s Yiddish-speaking ‘Alyeska’, Orthodox gangs in side-curls and knee breeches roam the streets of Sitka, where Detective Meyer Landsman discovers the corpse of a heroin-addled chess prodigy in the flophouse Meyer calls home. Marionette strings stretch back to the hands of charismatic Rebbe Gold, leader of a sect that seems to have drawn its mission statement from the Cosa Nostra. Meyer is determined to unsnarl the meaning behind the murder. Even if that means surrendering his badge and his dignity to the chief of Sitka’s homicide unit – his fearsome ex-wife Bina.
A novel of colossal ambition and heart, THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION interweaves a homage to the stylish menace of 1940s film noir with a bittersweet fable of identity, home and faith.
Blizzard by Marie Vingtras, Stephanie Smee (translator)
A blizzard rages in an isolated corner of Alaska. Few inhabitants live in this desolate place. Scattered across the vast, white expanse, they shelter in solitude from the tempest and the extreme cold. But amid this storm and far from home, a woman walks alone with the child.
She stops for a moment to re-tie the laces of her boots filled with snow. Instants later she looks up and the child under her care has vanished. In desperation she searches for him, knowing that every minute that goes by in this snowstorm is a threat to both of their lives. Soon she is joined in the hunt by the other neighbours. And as the search intensifies to save the missing child from certain death, she too will become the object of pursuit.
Blizzard is a gripping thriller, quiet and unnerving at first, but then building to a breath-taking climax.
Enjoy your virtual trip to Alaska! Any titles we’ve missed add in Comments below…
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Great Selection! I especially loved The Wind is Not a River, and of course who can forget Into the Wild?
You could also check Forty-Ninth by Boris Pronsky and Craig Britton.