In Alaska a popular belt buckle reads: “Alaska is what America was.” This novel is about 1950 Alaska, when the state’s population was an unbelievably small ninety-eight thousand people, compared to today’s seven hundred thousand plus. And yet Alaska is still “The Last Frontier.” This book is about a time when adventure and challenge were daily in the wilderness as well as in the small towns and cities between the great Mountain Ranges. In particular in the far north where these five years of wilderness intimacy take place, of coming of age and old age, of migrating caribou, free roaming wolf packs, aerial hunters. denning bears and huge moose, constant daylight, constant night, and much, much more.