FROM HERE YOU SEEM A BRAIDED RIVER You wore shorefast ice, birds were starting, spring high water was still white snow in mountains. Ice still rimmed your banks. We would come to know gibbous light. We would come to know snow light. We would come to know ice light, star, animal light, window light, want […]
Spotlight on Alaska Books: Overwinter, by Jeremy Pataky Read More »
As Tildie washed the dishes, she heard and felt a loud rumbling that a moment later caused the house to shake, the dishes in the sideboard to rattle, and the water in the sink to sway from side to side. She held onto the counter, realizing an earthquake was happening. Looking out the window, she
Spotlight on Alaska Books: North to the Star, by Richard Lannon Read More »
“To Cora, the gift was somehow more touching for being incomplete. Any mountain person would appreciate the hard work falling short of the desire. This half-built hot tub could be a twin to her own half-sewn quilt. Two new sprouts in the garden of good intentions. “Up close, it looked like a teacup built for
Spotlight on Alaska Books: The Avalanche Teahouse, by Stephen Bottum Read More »
“When you think of her, you call her the spider. If she’s a he, you call him a royal pain. She or he, the person who pushes every one of your buttons, irritates you until you feel off balance or even explode. Nasty people. While nice people definitely outnumber the nastier, nearly every good-sized organization
Spotlight on Alaska Books: Solutions, by Lynne Curry, Ph.D Read More »
A week had passed since Red found the corpse behind his cabin and called the state trooper. He didn’t have a phone in his dilapidated shack. He had to drive five miles down a rutted dirt road to use the payphone that hung on the wall outside the ferry terminal. Red knew what it was
Spotlight on Alaska Books: Grizzly Trade, by Dale Brandenburger Read More »
Something about the way he sized me up from the deck of his boat, his stance, his stabbing glare—a look that told me he and he alone was the boss, off shore and on—made me hesitate, even when he finally asked us in a gravelly voice to come aboard. But as we began to take
Spotlight on Alaska Books: Dead Reckoning, by Dave Atcheson Read More »
It is the nature of a body to succumb to gravity. And so it was with me and my directors. It was a light that they shed, or a vibration that they hummed in their bones without even knowing. Like so many directors, Blair had a singularity of presence that gleamed and flickered in the
Spotlight on Alaska Books: The Lion Trees, by Owen Thomas Read More »
I didn’t let myself think about who I was trying to help as I stopped underneath the darkened balcony. She was just a girl. Just your average all-powerful, insanely beautiful girl. My thoughts weren’t calming. My heart was thumping as loud as a jackhammer at the crack of dawn—which was about what time it was,
Spotlight on Alaska Books: WORDLESS, by AdriAnne Strickland Read More »
It was probably January when I decided to move a short distance into an abandoned log cabin right on the riverbank. Now there were two things I didn’t know. First, it was abandoned because it’s too cold right on the river, and if that wasn’t enough, this cabin had been lifted up in a flood
Spotlight on Alaska Books: Sleetmute: A True Story of Alaska, by Stan Resnicoff Read More »
We stood on top of the Arctic Divide amidst a jumble of sheer cliffs and broken peaks. The wind blew in cold rain squalls and roared across the barren rocks. Bob was excited, but I was uneasy; the mountains were black and cold. The south side of the ridge fell away to a high plateau
