Alaskan Travels: Far-Flung Tales of Love and Adventure

Description

Thirty years ago, celebrated American writer Edward Hoagland, in his early fifties and already with a dozen acclaimed books under his belt, had a choice: a midlife crisis or a midlife adventure. He chose the adventure. Pencil and notebook at the ready, Hoagland set out to explore and write about one of the last truly wild territories remaining on the face of the earth: Alaska. From the Arctic Ocean to the Kenai Peninsula, the backstreet bars of Anchorage to the Yukon River, Hoagland traveled the "real" Alaska from top to bottom. Here he documents not only the flora and fauna of America's last frontier, but also the extraordinary people living on the fringe. On his journey, he chronicles the lives of an astonishing and unforgettable array of prospectors, trappers, millionaire freebooters, drifters, oilmen, Eskimos, Indians, and a remarkably kind and capable frontier nurse named Linda. In his foreword, novelist Howard Frank Mosher describes Edward Hoagland's memoir as "the best book ever written about America's last best place." In the tradition of Twain's Life on the Mississippi and Jonathan Rabin's Old Glory, with a beautiful love story at its heart, this is an American masterpiece from a writer hailed by the Washington Post as "the Thoreau of our times."

Edward Hoagland: Edward Hoagland has written more than twenty books in sixty years, including travel memoirs (Alaskan Travels--Arcade 2012, 2013), essay collections, and novels. He worked in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus while attending Harvard, and later traveled the world from Yemen to Antarctica to Assam, writing for national magazines such as Harper's and Esquire. He has received numerous literary awards, and taught at ten colleges and universities. A native New Yorker, he now divides his time between Martha's Vineyard and a farmhouse in the mountains of northern Vermont.

A writer born, a writer obsessed. --Alfred Kazin Alaskan Travels is much more than a travel book. It is the chronicle of a love affair, with a powerful landscape and a powerful woman- a wonderful double portrait. --Paul Theroux Edward Hoagland is a strong, solid writer with a splendid feel for the intricacy, queerness and stubborn pertinacity of life. He is also, so far as i know, the best essayist working in our perishing republic. --Edward Abbey One of the very best writers of his generation. --Saul Bellow The best essayist of my generation. --John Updike To read two pages of Hoagland at random is to know immediately that you are in the hands of a supremely tough-minded man and a man of perfect honesty. "A writer born, a writer obsessed." --Alfred Kazin "Alaskan Travels is much more than a travel book. It is the chronicle of a love affair, with a powerful landscape and a powerful woman- a wonderful double portrait." --Paul Theroux "Edward Hoagland is a strong, solid writer with a splendid feel for the intricacy, queerness and stubborn pertinacity of life. He is also, so far as i know, the best essayist working in our perishing republic." --Edward Abbey "One of the very best writers of his generation." --Saul Bellow "The best essayist of my generation." --John Updike "To read two pages of Hoagland at random is to know immediately that you are in the hands of a supremely tough-minded man and a man of perfect honesty." Hoagland has captured the restless adventuresomeness ofour frontiersmen, and the riot of nature in its unspoiled glory. --John Irving "Hoagland has captured the restless adventuresomeness of our frontiersmen, and the riot of nature in its unspoiled glory." --John Irving