Four Novels With Alaskan Characters or Themes

Tales of Espionage, Statehood, the Gold Rush and Prehistoric Alaska

Jul 12, 2009

From the wilds of Alaska's prehistory to the Cold War era of the 1980s, these books take the reader into various parts of the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Some fictional characters found in these Alaska-based novels are a teenage girl from Baranof, a Russian fur trader, an American double agent and several alcoholics, thieves and tricksters.

This historical novel begins in the 17th century when Russian fur hunters arrive in Alaska. It follows the life of one trapper, Luka Kharkov, as he marries a native Aleutian girl named Winter Swan and creates the central characters of the story. The Kharkov family continues after Luka and Winter Swan are gone, and the personal stories of family members up through statehood in 1959 make up most of the book. It includes true accounts of colonization battles, gold rushes and other historical events. Publisher’s Weekly says “this is not a glamorous, high-flying romance; rather it tends to be a bleak tale of hardship and endurance among fiercely independent people”.

A teenage girl named Christine Storm is the central character in this story. She has two grandfathers who are as different as night and day, and each is trying to accomplish a different future for the state of Alaska. The fictional town of Baranof, Alaska in the 1940s and 50s is the setting for the tale, and Alaska’s impending statehood is the battleground for the two grandfathers. Booklist says “the public warfare between these two is epitomized in the private tug-of-war for the affections … of their granddaughter Christine”.

In the ninth volume of the November Man series, tough guy Devereaux is sent to Alaska during the Cold War to discover the truth about a double agent named Henry McGee. A story of espionage, trickery, greed and corruption that just gets more complex as the plot unfolds. According to Publisher’s Weekly, “life is cheap in McGee’s world, torture is routine and the women as ruthless as the men … coming at the truth becomes for the reader an especially tricky and exciting game”.

The scope of this novel is as broad as its more-than-1000 pages would suggest. Beginning with Alaska’s 18th century past, it takes the reader down countless winding paths, crossing the line between historical fiction and ordinary fiction many times along the way. As Time magazine said in its review in 1988, “there are knaves and opportunists who have depleted Alaska’s resources and contributed to the high rates of alcoholism and suicide. One of Michener’s favorite words is noble, but after mushing through this Arctic saga … one is not surprised that he uses it mainly to describe grizzly bears, salmon and whales”.

Novelists Janet Dailey, Edna Ferber, Bill Granger and James Michener take readers away from their everyday lives as they create fictional characters and stories that share a common setting in Alaska.

The copyright of the article Four Novels With Alaskan Characters or Themes in Modern American Fiction is owned by Marie Brannon. Permission to republish Four Novels With Alaskan Characters or Themes in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.