Are you looking for a good about Alaska or written by an Alaskan author? Be sure to check out some of the book reviews and announcements of new releases published in various issues of Alaska Women Speak.
The Man Who Swam With Beavers
Stories by Nancy Lord
Reviewed by Carol Mercer
The Man Who Swam With Beavers is one of the seventeen stories of modern day American life in this collection which is based on Native American legends, particularly Alaska’s Athabascan.
Each story is stunning in its own way, and I could not help reading it through in one sitting, but now I look forward to reading each story again, savoring it slowly, listening for the message, or the moral, or the tender moment of a simple joy shared, be it between a grandmother and grandson, or a man and a robin. Nancy Lord, the newest Alaska Writer Laureate lives in Homer, where she writes, teaches creative writing at the University of Alaska, and fishes commercially for salmon. ©
The Man Who Swam With Beavers ©2001 ISBN 1-566-89- 110-8 paperback $14.95.
Two in the Far North
by Margaret “Mardy” Murie
Reviewed by Katy Kerris
Many consider Margaret “Mardy” Murie to be one of the founders of the modern conservation movement. Mardy was one of the founders of the Wilderness Society and instrumental in convincing President Eisenhower to set aside nine million acres in Northern Alaska for the Arctic National Wildlife Range, which later became the 19 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Mardy helped pass the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, setting up ten new national parks in Alaska, a total of 43 million acres. Mardy continued to fight for the wilderness until her death at 101 years old, on October 19th, 2003.
Two in the Far North is an autobiography written by Mardy herself, chronicling her early years in Fairbanks and her adventures in Alaska as a young woman raising a family. Mardy Thomas was born in 1902 in Seattle, Washington. When she was nine, her stepfather got a job in Alaska and they moved to Fairbanks. The trip took three weeks and involved travel by steamship, train, riverboat, and horse drawn cart. In those days, Fairbanks was a town of 5000 people in the middle of nowhere. It had 23 saloons and five churches and took eight days of travel by
horse sleigh or ten days by river to get to the nearest town. There was no running water or electricity in town, and mail arrived by sleigh and dogsled. Mardy learned how to prepare food supplies for winter, chop wood, mush dogs, and build fires.
In the days when few women attended university, Mardy completed high school and went to Reed College in Oregon, then to Simmons College in Boston. Mardy missed Alaska and moved back to Fairbanks to finish her business degree, becoming the first woman graduate of the University of Alaska.
While at the University, she met Olaus Murie, a young biologist studying caribou for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. They fell
in love, and were married on a stern wheel boat in 1924 on the way to Olaus’ trip to study caribou in the far north. Mardy refused to be separated from Olaus, and the couple began a 550 mile sled dog trip Mardy called her honeymoon. The couple traveled across a snowy landscape under the northern lights looking for caribou and sleeping in a small tent made of caribou hides. Mardy writes of her travels by sled pulled by dog team: “When the trail was good I’d stand on the handlebars (sled); otherwise I’d have to run.” Mardy and Olaus were deep in the Alaskan wilderness, and saw no other people for months. Many thought the wilderness was no place for a woman, but Mardy always felt at home.
Later that year Mardy and Olaus had their first child. Since Mardy was determined to help Olaus with his work and wanted to be with him, she and baby Martin went with Olaus on a 250 mile boat trip in Alaska to study Canada Geese. When the engine on the boat broke, they pushed the boat up river by pole. Mardy says, “When you washed dishes, every time you took your hands out of
the water, they’d be black with mosquitoes.”
Mardy always kept a diary of their journeys and later wrote four books on their adventures. When Olaus’ job transferred him to Wyoming to study elk, Mardy and their three children set up a homestead in Jackson.
Mardy was a unique woman who loved adventure and never gave up on her fight to protect the wild country she loved. Thanks to Mardy Murie and her friends, many areas of wilderness are now preserved for all Americans to enjoy. ©
Two in the Far North by Margaret E. Murie $15.95 ISBN
0-88240-489-X ©1957 Alaska Northwest Books. Available in
local bookstores.
“Ted and Me” by Libby Roderick is the essay that I headed for first. It seems that Libby and Ted Stevens have a personal history. Ted and Libby’s father practiced law together in the 1960’s. And Libby was five years old when the 1964 earthquake hit Turnagain where the families were neighbors and shared candles. Since that time Ted and Libby have worked environmental polar opposites, if you will. They, essentially, have needed an interpreter for some time now.