I am getting ready for a late June ride to Alaska and want some good books on , or set in, Alaska and the Yukon. What are your favorites?
"Alaska" from James Michener. It's a long read, slow at the beginning, but is a good book on the early days of AK. I still suggest the Milepost for your ride, but you probably already have one by now.
The Cruelest Miles, a well written account of the original serum run to Nome that is memorialized these days as the Iditarod Race..
I've enjoyed the series of murder mysteries by Sue Henry. She does a great job of describing - very accurately - the locales (mostly in Alaska, but also in the Yukon and on the Alcan) in which the stories take place.
If you're riding into or out of Prince Rupert BC you'll be going thru the Hazelton area. BC = Beautiful Country! One of my favorite books on that area is Challenge The Wilderness by Tomlinson. Its about one of the first missionary families into BC. Good luck and have fun, Mark H.
Not sure what your looking for but the first one is about a trapper and hunter named Frank Glaser. The second one is about a homesteader named Richard Proenneke. (1) Alaska's wolfman by Jim Rearden (2) One man's wilderness: an Alaskan odyssey by Sam Keith
I read that years ago & was not impressed. I’ve been here a lot longer than most anyone on here & could recommend a few. Depends on what you are looking for. If you like airplanes first up would be ‘The Flying North’ by Jean Potter. Great little book about the bush pilots here years ago. You can get it in paperback .... around here anyway, I've gifted a few. ‘Glacier Pilot’, ‘Wager the Wind’ are also very good. Let me know what you are looking for & I could recommend some others. Of course there is always the classic stuff you should have read years ago. Robert Service’s great poems about Alaska & the Klondike &Jack London’s books & stories about the North. http://www.arcticwebsite.com/LondonJackKlond.html Londons's short story ‘To Build a Fire’ is very good. Service’s ‘The Spell of the Yukon’, ‘The Shooting of Dan McGrew’, & ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’ are great & read like little stories. Emm, what the hell.... I like readin' these again... The Cremation of Sam McGee “There are strange things done in the midnight sun ....” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174348 The Shooting of Dan McGREW “A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon ....” http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Poetry/ServiceShooting.htm
If you like airplanes, Wager With the Wind is good. My first read, must read recommendation would be "The Copper Spike"..... the story of the Kennicot copper mine in turn of the century Ak. There is also period novel called "The Iron Trail" covers the history & thinly disguises the characters that built the railroad and copper mine. I think it was made into a movie in the 1930's. Besides.... Kennicot should be one of your destinations if you are coming up. I used to give copies of The Copper Spike to deserving travelers, harder to find now but I got one off the internet last year, there were quite a few
Good call Beezer. A classic by Rex Beach, published around 1904, I believe. One of my favorites of all time is "Ancient Men of the Arctic" by J. Louis Giddings. He was an anthropologist or archaelologist who did his Ph.D. research in western Alaska in the 40's and 50's. He died young and his wife completed the book, published around 1961. Giddings found around 600 ancient houses on the coast between Unalakleet and Selawik, built in waves showing the timeline of the Bering migration. A little known fact is that Giddings also found Onion Portage, and dug down to about 15 layers of civilization at a spot where - I believe it was on the Kobuk River - caribou were caught in their annual migration.
Melozi This book is a look at life in AK about the time I was born! Back in college I dated the daughter of one of Melozi's owners , so I'm kinda fascinated with the place. The determination necessary to build a civilized life hundreds of miles out in the bush is impressive. Yukon Murders Deadly Detail Happy Hour Murder mysteries set in the Yukon/Kuskokwim Delta of western Alaska. Written by a former bush pilot, they're fun stories.
If you want to read about life in the the far north many years ago, or just a damn good book, I highly recommend the book Fifty Years Below Zero by Charles Brower.
Another one comes to mind if you are into mountaineering at all: Minus 148 which is abouit the first winter ascent of Denali.
