Edge of Nowhere
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
"More psychological depth than Robinson Crusoe."—Frank McCourt
Praise for Lone Wolves:
"A beautiful and moving story of courage and love."—Ray Bradbury
"Powerful, eloquent, and fascinating, showcasing a vanishing way of life in rich detail."—Kirkus Reviews
"An adept focus on coming-of-age and an illuminating glimpse of Native Alaskan cultures."--The Horn Book
"A gifted storyteller with a unique perspective. . . . A breathlessly paced and thrilling ride for readers of all ages."--Cambridge Book Review
Praise for The Great Death and Alaskan:
"Gripping and poignant. . . . Smelcer's prose is clean and rich; original yet unpretentious."—Horn Book, starred review
"John Smelcer is Alaska's modern-day Jack London."—W.P. Kinsella
"An indispensible contribution to Alaskan literature."—J. D. Salinger
"Smelcer speaks from the land, for the land, and the people who belong to it."—Ursula K. Le Guin
Sixteen-year-old Seth and his dog fall off his father's commercial fishing boat in Prince William Sound. They struggle to survive off land and sea as they work their way home from island to island in a three-month journey. The isolation allows Seth to understand his father's love, accept his Native Alaskan heritage, and accept his grief over his mother's death.
John Smelcer is poetry editor of Rosebud and the author of more than forty books. He is an Alaskan native of the Ahtna tribe, and the last tribal member who reads and writes in Ahtna. He divides his time between Talkeetna, Alaska, and Kirksville, Missouri, where he teaches in the department of communications studies at Truman State University.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Smelcer (Lone Wolves) gives readers a crash course in Alaskan history, geography, and lore in a survival story, first published in the U.K., that pits a teenager against nature's indifference. Overweight 16-year-old Seth Evanoff is "soft" and "lazy" in the eyes of his fisherman father, who tells his son, "You wouldn't last a day in the wilderness," just before Seth and his dog are washed overboard during a fishing expedition. The third-person narration, decidedly adult in its perspective and tone, alternates between Seth's struggle to survive and his widowed father's agony as he searches for his son. Tense encounters with bears and killer whales add to the already substantial tension, and Smelcer makes Seth resourceful without being a wonderboy unable to make a fire, he necessarily develops a taste for raw salmon, mussels, and clams. Survival information (often gleaned from what Seth's father taught him) and Alutiiq words that Seth has learned from his grandmother are incorporated throughout. While Smelcer hammers themes of mankind's fractured relationship with nature a bit hard, it's a thought-provoking and moving coming-of-age story. Ages 12 up.
