Alaskan fiction
Discover the best Alaskan fiction books with our curated list. Explore thrilling adventures, rich cultures, and stunning landscapes in these top-rated novels set in Alaska.
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The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)
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Flight of the Goose
by Lesley Thomas
"Flight of the Goose" is an award-winning novel set in a remote village of the Alaskan Arctic, in a time of great cultural and ecological change. "The story took my breath away. I wept my way through it, identifying profoundly with both protagonists. (Thomas) has a fine grasp of the complexity of human relations and culture in such a village. She also writes beautifully. A remarkable book altogether." Jean L. Briggs, Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, Memorial University of Newfoundland and author of "Never in Anger" "Memorable...One of the best novels of Alaska that I have read. With the author's unerring knowledge of anthropology and social and environmental issues, it could fit any rural Alaskan village." Dorothy Jean Ray, author of "A Legacy of Arctic Art," and "The Eskimos of Bering Strait 1650-1898" 1971, the Alaskan Arctic. "It was a time when much was hidden, before outsiders came on bended knee to learn from the elders. Outsiders came, but it was not to learn from us; it was to change us. There was a war and a university, an oil company and a small village, all run by men. There was a young man who hunted geese to feed his family and another who studied geese to save them. And there was a young woman who flew into the world of spirits to save herself..." So relates Kayuqtuq Ugungoraseok, "the red fox." An orphan traumatized by her past, she seeks respect in her traditional Inupiat village through the outlawed path of shamanism. Her plan leads to tragedy when she interferes with scientist Leif Trygvesen, who has come to research the effects of oil spills on salt marshes - and evade the draft. Told from both Kayuqtuq's and Leif's perspectives, "Flight of the Goose"is a tale of cultural conflict, spiritual awakening, redemption and love in a time when things were - to use the phrase of an old arctic shaman - "no longer familiar." "Flight of the Goose" is recommended in Cultural Survival Quarterly, Shaman's Drum Journal, First Alaskans Magazine, Tundra Drums, Seattle Post Intelligencer and Sacred Hoop Magazine. It has been studied at North Slope School District, University of Washington, University of Alaska, Boston University, Sterling College, by Sandra Ingerman at Medicine for the Earth - and is read by book clubs worldwide. "Flight of the Goose" won first place in several literary contests. See more at www.lesleythomas.com
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Ordinary Wolves
by Seth Kantner
Cutuk Hawcly, a white boy living among the natives of the Alaskan Tundra is torn between the culture of the modern cities where his father comes from and the Alaskan wilderness where he was born and raised.
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Bird Girl and the Man Who Followed the Sun
by Velma Wallis
With the publication of Two Old Women, Velma Wallis firmly established herself as one of the most important voices in Native American writing. A national bestseller, her empowering fable won the Western State Book Award in 1993 and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award in 1994. Translated into 16 languages, it went on to international success, quickly reaching bestseller status in Germany. To date, more than 350,000 copies have been sold worldwide. Bird Girl and the Man Who Followed the Sun follows in this bestselling tradition. Rooted in the ancient legends of Alaska's Athabaskan Indians, it tells the stories of two adventurers who decide to leave the safety of their respective tribes. Bird Girl is a headstrong young woman who learned early on the skills of a hunter. When told that she must end her forays and take up the traditional role of wife and mother, she defies her family's expectations and confidently takes off to brave life on her own. Daagoo is a dreamer, curious about the world beyond. Longing to know what happens to the sun in winter, he sets out on a quest to find the legendary "Land of the Sun." Their stories interweave and intersect as they each face the many dangers and challenges of life alone in the wilderness. In the end, both learn that the search for individualism often comes at a high price, but that it is a price well worth paying, for through this quest comes the beginning of true wisdom.
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The Cloud Atlas
by Liam Callanan
In a richly inspired debut reminiscent of "Snow Falling on Cedars" and "The English Patient," this stirring novel, set against a magnificent Alaskan backdrop, reveals one of the most closely guarded secrets of World War II in a tale that is both a heart-quickening mystery and a unique love story.
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Murder on the Iditarod Trail
by Sue Henry
The winner of Alaska's world-famous Iditarod -- a grueling, eleven-hundred-mile dog sled race across a frigid Arctic wilderness---takes home a $250,000 purse. But this year, the prize is survival. Only the toughest and the most able come to compete in this annual torturous test of endurance, skill, and courage. Now, suddenly and inexplicably, the top Iditarod contestants are dying one by one in bizarre and gruesome ways. Jessie Arnold, Alaska's premier female "musher," fears she may be the next intended victim, but nothing is going to prevent her from aggressively pursuing the glory and the rewards that victory brings. Dedicated State Trooper Alex Jensen is determined to track down the murderer before more innocent blood stains the pristine Alaskan snow. But Jensen's hunt is leading him into the frozen heart of the perilous wild that Jessie Arnold knows so well -- a merciless place far from any vestige of civilization, where nature can kill as fast as a bullet...and only the Arctic night can hear your final screams.
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Julie of the Wolves
by Jean Craighead George
Lost on the Tundra To her small Eskimo village, she is known as Miyax; to her friend in San Francisco, she is Julie. When the village is no longer safe for her, Miyax runs away. But she soon finds herself lost in the Alaskan wilderness, without food, without even a compass to guide her. Slowly she is accepted by a pack of Arctic wolves, Mid she grows to love them as though they were family. With their help, and drawing on her father's teachings, Miyax struggles day by clay to survive. But the time comes when she must leave the wilderness and choose between the old ways an(] the new. Which will she choose? For she is Miyax of the Eskimos--but Julie of the Wolves. Faced with the prospect of a disagreeable arranged marriage or a journey acoss the barren Alaskan tundra, 13-year-old Miyax chooses the tundra. She finds herself caught between the traditional Eskimo ways and the modern ways of the whites. Miyax, or Julie as her pen pal Amy calls her, sets out alone to visit Amy in San Francisco, a world far away from Eskimo culture and the frozen land of Alaska. During her long and arduous journey, Miyax comes to appreciate the value of her Eskimo heritage, learns about herself, and wins the friednship of a pack of wolves. After learning the language of the wolves and slowly earning their trust, Julie becomes a member of the pack. Since its first publication, Julie of The Wolves,winner of thr 1973 Newbery Medal, has found its way into the hearts of millions of readers.
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Shaman Pass
by Stan Jones
“In a robust sequel to White Sky, Black Ice, this Alaska state trooper is still burdened by his urban upbringing and his aversion to ice and snow . . . Active maintains his awe of the vast Alaskan tundra, a forbidding region that Jones renders in all its bone-chilling beauty.” —The New York Times Book Review State Trooper Nathan Active was born in the Inupiat village of Chukchi, where he is now stationed, but he was adopted and raised in Anchorage. Now he must investigate the murder of a tribal leader who was stabbed to death with an antique harpoon that was recently returned to the community under the Indian Graves Act.
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The Shaman's Knife
by Scott Young
In this riveting new thriller Inuit Matteesie Kitologitak, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police inspector, investigates a brutal double murder in a tiny Arctic village. He finds that to solve the murder he must come face to face with the "old ways" and a native holy man whose help may hold the key. Young is the author of more than 30 books, including several Canadian bestsellers.
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Polar Star
by Martin Cruz Smith
Arkady Renko has made too many enemies and now he toils in obscurity on a Russian factory ship in the middle of the Bering Sea. But when a female crew member is picked up dead with the day's catch, Arkady becomes obsessed with the case and once again discovers more than he wants to know and certainly more than he bargained for....
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Alaska
by James A. Michener
In this sweeping epic of the northernmost American frontier, James A. Michener guides us through Alaska’s fierce terrain and history, from the long-forgotten past to the bustling present. As his characters struggle for survival, Michener weaves together the exciting high points of Alaska’s story: its brutal origins; the American acquisition; the gold rush; the tremendous growth and exploitation of the salmon industry; the arduous construction of the Alcan Highway, undertaken to defend the territory during World War II. A spellbinding portrait of a human community fighting to establish its place in the world, Alaska traces a bold and majestic saga of the enduring spirit of a land and its people. Praise for Alaska “Few will escape the allure of the land and people [Michener] describes. . . . Alaska takes the reader on a journey through one of the bleakest, richest, most foreboding, and highly inviting territories in our Republic, if not the world. . . . The characters that Michener creates are bigger than life.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “Always the master of exhaustive historical research, Michener tracks the settling of Alaska [in] vividly detailed scenes and well-developed characters.”—Boston Herald “Michener is still, sentence for sentence, writing’s fastest attention grabber.”—The New York Times