Posts by MELISSA COFFMAN
Survival in a Mill Town, by Von Braschler
Survival in a Mill Town, by Von Braschler For many years, the 1916 Everett Massacre which systematically killed countless mill workers has been swept away. There has been a sort of amnesia about that Bloody Sunday and a strange sort of immunity for the civic leaders who brutalized lumber workers. These were sawmill workers who…
Read MoreKill Brother, Kill Sister, by Leland E. Hale
Kill Brother, Kill Sister, by Leland E. Hale Alaska Airlines Captain Robert Pfeil was the scion of an Alaskan pioneer family. His sister Muriel was a winner in her own right. As the owner of Alaska’s most successful travel agency, routinely voted one of the best-dressed women in Anchorage, she was worldly in a city…
Read MoreA Guide to the Notorious Bars of Alaska, 3rd Ed., by Doug Vandegraft
A Guide to the Notorious Bars of Alaska, 3rd Ed., by Doug Vandegraft The Lower 48 have created myths and legends about Alaska. Things in Alaska are bigger, colder, wilder, fiercer, more rugged, more independent, more resourceful, to name just a few of the qualities that define the Alaska myth. However, the one that says…
Read MoreCalifornia Lighthouses Guidebook, by Sharlene and Ted Nelson
California Lighthouses Guidebook, by Sharlene and Ted Nelson Sailing along California’s often forbidding coast was a risky venture before 1854, the year the state’s first lighthouse was established. Eventually more than forty lighthouse stations were built to guide mariners along 1,200 miles of coastline from San Diego to the Redwood Coast, and through bays and…
Read MoreHill of Dead Horses, by Sarah Birdsall
Hill of Dead Horses, by Sarah Birdsall In the early twentieth century a bear frightens a team of horses into plunging to their deaths from off a hill near a proposed railroad route through wilderness Alaska. In 1974 young Californians Thomas Findlay and Emily Wells dig post holes for a cabin on that very hill…
Read MoreSecret Places, by Don Stuart
Secret Places, by Don Stuart Three days before the season opening, Native Alaskan commercial salmon fisherman, Johnny Ingman leaves his hometown of Sweetwater bound for the fishing grounds and disappears. Johnny’s disappearance comes at a time of deep frustration in Johnny’s tiny home village. Changing pressures, values, and demands from the outside world are increasingly…
Read MoreDeath at the Shipshape Bookshop, by Greta McKennan
Death at the Shipshape Bookshop, by Greta McKennan Junetta Beale is living in paradise. As owner of the Shipshape Bookshop in Southeast Alaska, she sells books in town, operates a lending library for the locals, and serves the villages in her floating bookmobile. She loves her peaceful coastal life. That peace is shattered when she…
Read MoreDeath in the Underworld, by Betsy Longenbaugh
Death in the Underworld, by Betsy Longenbaugh Federal Marshal Frank Leishke is called to the scene of the vicious murder of a prostitute in Douglas, Alaska, in 1916. The site of the largest gold mine in the world, Douglas was also home to numerous bars, prostitutes, and itinerant workers. Leishke is aided in his work…
Read MoreThe Ghost of the Kenai, by Aurora Hardy
The Ghost of the Kenai, by Aurora Hardy In 1796, the men at Fort Kenay or Russian Redoubt Saint Nicholas are terrified. A ghost, a woman in a tattered white dress, screams nightly along the banks of the Kenai River below the bluffs where the fort stands. Young Nicholas arrives with Captain Zaikov on his…
Read MoreChasing the Dark, by Joseph Jackson
Chasing the Dark, by Joseph Jackson Joe Jackson’s life has seemed to follow the hours of low light; waking in the pitch-dark to beat the sun and lingering until it’s long gone. The stories told in between range from hunting snowshoe hares in the cold of Alaskan winter; Spey casting monotonously to king salmon and…
Read More