Braving Home: Dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and Other Extreme Locales

by Jake Halpern

Book Overview

Funny, moving, and utterly unique, Braving Home introduces us to five unforgettable modern American pioneers. When Jake Halpern was a cub reporter, he became obsessed with stories about some... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618155481
• ISBN13: 9780618155484
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Strong, Fun,Quirky Incredible People!!

I bought this book as a gift for my brother. I couldn't help reading it first. I gave it to him and then bought another copy because I wanted to read it again. The people in this book lead lives that are so unusual. It makes you appreciate the safety and sanctuary that is home.

Fun, Fantastic, and interesting read about strange places

Jake Halpern takes on strange human habitats of our country and dives in to discover just why there are still people that live (or ever did live!) in these places. In each case, his chapter delves into the location, its uniqueness that makes it seemingly unhabitatible. These are places that are likely to be uninhabitable if not for human inventions like airplanes, air conditioning, indoor heat, and other modern marvels.His stories take us around the country, from a small flood-prone town in North Carolina, an incredibly isolated village (though it seems more like a commune) in Alaska, to the Mailbu Hills where among the luxurious wealth live a family of ranchers that continue to fight the region's frequent firefighters on their own. In each locale, Halpern spends a significant time there, and often stays over for a few days with people who are braving the odds to live in these extreme locales. This allows him to dig deep into their rationals for continuing to live in such strange places. For example, he spends time with a woman in a very isolated spot in Alaska who is trying to stay hidden from her husband. For others, such as an old man in NC, that is where he was born and raised and lived his whole life, for him there is simply nowhere else to go.These stories are funny, poignant and interesting. Each makes for a very interesting read and through the set of chapters (where each is like a story of its own) the reader gets to see just how strange and weird our country and its people can be... but not just strange, just how brave and devoted they can be.This is a must read!!!

Be It Ever So Humble.....

Jake Halpern has written a remarkable first book. Not yet thirty years old, he's called numerous cities spread over three continents "home." Like most of us on this highly mobile world, home represented little more than a temporary base of operations. Working as a fact checker for the New Republic, Jake became increasingly fascinated by the concept of home as a central part of one's identity, and by those people so rooted to a particular place they would do anything to remain anchored there. After extensive research, Jake set out on an odyssey that took him to Princeville, North Carolina, a town submerged by a flood; Whittier, Alaska, a community at the end of a two and a half-mile long tunnel, and a community where almost everyone lives in a single, 14-story high rise; the "Lava-Side Inn," the last occupied home in a Hawaiian subdivision that's been cut off by a volcano's active flow; Malibu, California, where the descendants of pioneers still battle the wildlifes that sweep their region with alarming regularity; and Grand Isle, Louisiana, a lone outpost in the Gulf of Mexico where a few hardy souls always ride out the worst hurricanes. In these pages, you'll get to know the independent, self-sufficient, heroic souls that Jake met during his journeys. You're very much the armchair traveler as he invites you into his motel room, the front seat of his rental car, and into the homes and lives of these memorable people. This is a great book to feed the mind and the heart.--William C. Hall

No Nomads Here

Imagine living in a home surrounded by lava flows, or on a small island where hurricanes are common and the one road out will be covered with water well before the storm hits. Jack Halpern has given a view, not only of five very extreme living conditions, but also of the strong-willed people who tenaciously cling to the place they call home. It is hard to decide which is more memorable, the unforgiving land or the people who weather the elements. For these hardy souls, home is a place of roots and continuity, a tenuous place in reality but a concrete place in mind, a place that truly defines them.

Splendid

This book is a great combination of local history, folklore, and tales of individuals who fight and win daily battles against mother nature. The strength of the book lies in the character development that takes place in each chapter. Halpern's first person narrative allows you to participate in the struggle's of the protagonists.