Klee Wyck Journal, by Lou McKee

After many years of paddling the waterways and outer coasts of the Pacific Northwest, author and artist Lou McKee planned a short kayaking trip near Vancouver Island with friends and family that unexpectedly became a yearly tradition. During the first trip that Pacific Northwestern summer, they chanced upon an enchanting stretch of beach and spent…

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The Columbia, by Stewart Holbrook

The Columbia (346 pages) commemorates the disciplining and conversion of a wilderness river from a water passageway to a powerhouse and a source of irrigation. Here is the story of its explorers who came by boat and by foot: the bickering and battles between Hudson’s Bay Company and Astor’s fur trappers, the settlers that turned politicians…

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Far Corner, by Stewart Holbrook

Far Corner (284 pages) is the saga of a latter-day pioneer who invaded the Pacific Northwest wearing the only derby hat those parts had ever seen. Author Stewart H. Holbrook bought the hat in Boston just before he boarded the steam-cars to seek fame and fortune amidst the booms and busts of the roaring ‘20s. On…

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Cold Starry Night, by Claire Fejes

Young Claire Fejes was a promising sculptor and painter in New York City in 1946, when her husband gave in to “gold fever”. She held the unconventional view that her career was as important as his. But in those days, a woman followed her husband, so Claire did – to Fairbanks, last stop on the…

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Midnight Sun, Arctic Moon, by Mary Albanese

Midnight Sun, Arctic Moon (216 pages) follows a young upstate New York woman who begins the adventure of a life-time as she moves away from her safe and conventional path.  She is unable to resist the excitement and challenge of a chance to become a geological explorer in Alaska, where she maps remote wilderness areas…

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In Search of the Kuskokwim, by Stephen Spurr

The United States knew relatively little about Alaska prior to the turn of the century when the Klondike Gold Rush was about to attract thousands of stampeders north, many of them spilling over into Alaska as more gold was discovered on the Yukon River and her tributaries. The government had few reliable maps of the…

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