Synopses & Reviews
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 Americas 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 Hoaglands memoir as “the best book ever written about Americas last best place.”
In the tradition of Twains Life on the Mississippi and Jonathan Rabins 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.”
Review
"The best essayist of my generation." John Updike
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"
Hoagland has captured the restless adventuresomeness of our frontiersmen, and the riot of nature in its unspoiled glory.
" John Irving
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"To read two pages of Hoagland at random is to know immediately that you are in the hands of a supremely tough-minded man and a man of perfect honesty." Newsweek
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"One of the very best writers of his generation." Saul Bellow
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"A writer born, a writer obsessed." Alfred Kazin
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"Edward Hoagland is a strong, solid writer with a splendid feel for the intricacy, queerness and stubborn pertinacity of life. He is also, so far as i know, the best essayist working in our perishing republic." Edward Abbey
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"Alaskan Travels is much more than a travel book. It is the chronicle of a love affair, with a powerful landscape and a powerful woman- a wonderful double portrait." Paul Theroux
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"Blue Collar Nomad is a serene collection of meditations on self, time, and place in the 21st century American landscape. Evoking the spiritual quests of Jon Krakauer, Jack Kerouac, and Henry David Thoreau, this collection of poems, narratives, and essays affirms one’s faith in the power of language to root and restore a world of one. For anyone searching for the Church of the Blue Sky, reading Jake Kaida is a must.” —Nancy M. Grace, author, Breaking the Rule of Cool
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"Jake Kaida found spiritual discipline in the nomadic lifestyle and sustained it with the gift of intuitive grace. Above all, Kaida learned about showing up and being present. His personal journey is beautifully told in Blue Collar Nomad in both prose and poem." —Christine Cote, editor, Stone Voices
Synopsis
“America’s most intelligent and wide-ranging essayist-naturalist.” —Philip Roth
Synopsis
A compendium of North American travel and place-based pieces composed between the ages of 23 and 35, this book explores gritty urban areas, eclectic towns, and isolated geographical landscapes, introducing a cast of interesting local characters along the way. The atmospheric narratives blend genuine working class ethics with jazzy intuitive prose in order to transport the reader deep into various localities and communities in the United States and Canada. The author sponsored his 12-year trek across the land by working as a farmhand, natural chef, organic gardener, bartender, landscape artist, writing instructor, and mentor to at-risk youth. As a whole, this collection of travel essays encourages the reader to be with the land and its people in order to deeply feel the world.
About the Author
Edward Hoagland has written more than twenty books, including the travel memoirs Alaskan Travels and African Calliope, the essay collections Walking the Dead Diamond River and The Tugman’s Passage, and the novels Cat Man and Seven Rivers West. He worked in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus while attending Harvard, and later traveled the world writing for a number of national magazines including Harper’s and Esquire. He has received numerous prestigious literary awards, and taught at many American colleges and universities. He is a native New Yorker, who now divides his time between Martha’s Vineyard and Burton, Vermont.Howard Frank Mosher is the author of ten novels and two memoirs. He has won many awards for his fiction, including Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, the American Civil Liberties Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Vermont Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, the New England Book Award and, most recently, the 2011 New England Independent Booksellers Association's President's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. He lives in Vermont.