Alaskan Travels

Far-Flung Tales of Love and Adventure

By: Edward Hoagland

Narrated by: David Rapkin

Thirty years ago, celebrated American writer Edward Hoagland, in his early fifties and already with a dozen acclaimed books under his belt, had a choice: a midlife crisis or a midlife adventure. He chose the adventure. Pencil and notebook at the ready, Hoagland set out to explore and write about one of the last truly wild territories remaining on the face of the earth: Alaska.

From the Arctic Ocean to the Kenai Peninsula, the backstreet bars of Anchorage to the Yukon River, Hoagland traveled the “real” Alaska from top to bottom. Here he documents not only the flora and fauna of America’s last frontier, but also the extraordinary people living on the fringe. On his journey he chronicles the lives of an astonishing and unforgettable array of prospectors, trappers, millionaire freebooters, drifters, oilmen, Eskimos, Indians, and a remarkably kind and capable frontier nurse named Linda.

In his foreword, novelist Howard Frank Mosher describes Edward Hoagland’s memoir as “the best book ever written about America’s last best place.” In the tradition of Twain’s Life on the Mississippi and Jonathan Rabin’s Old Glory, with a beautiful love story at its heart, this is an American masterpiece from a writer hailed by the Washington Post as “the Thoreau of our times.”

©2012 Edward Hoagland (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

To wordie

More words for no reason is not always better. Some just telling the story is enough.

A new view of Alaska more from the locals!

The author spends two thirds of his time telling about the life of the native people and the why of their ways. The last third is too much about himself!

So boring, couldn't finish it

This is boring and told in excruciating detail with a cool bit of information here and there. I tried so hard to finish it because I love Alaskan books, but I just cannot finish the last couple hours.

Great survey of modern Alaska!

This is the journal of a top journalist who together with his nurse partner, lived these stories

Uncomfortable on many places

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I would have preferred not to leave the book with a compromised faith in Hoagland, the man. This is a matter of sensitivity though, it likely won’t generally offend others. There was a hint in another book when he talks as a senior about enjoying sleeping between the sheets that a sixteen year old girl had recently been in. If that was unpalatable, there will be moments here in this collection when you hear things, his ways of seeing women and openly expressing honesty with his sexual preoccupations, that will similarly move you away from Hoagland the writer and toward Hoagland the oftentimes lecherous man. Again this is personal, but it’s not the first time I’ve heard this take on it.

Could you see Alaskan Travels being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Oh sure, if someone really wanted to I guess. There is much in it and Hoaglands skill is often to be found in how well he brings the reader along with him through the descriptive. So, you can almost already see the movie.

Mispronounced ramblings of an adulterer.

I'm sorry but I don't think it's asking too much for the narrator to pick up a dictionary. He couldn't get placer or Skagit correct. The story gives a little insight into what Alaska looked like years ago. It's intertwined with his story of cheating on his wife because he had decided to give up on his marriage. The author spends too much time trying to justify his adultery. Priced perfectly at free.