Looking for Alaska

by Peter Jenkins

Book Overview

From the author of "A Walk Across America, Looking for Alaska" is Jenkins' account of a year-long odyssey in America's last wilderness. From a fishing expedition with some of Alaska's Native leaders to an ocean-kayaking trip in the glacier-ridden waters off the northwestern coast, Jenkins delivers a memorable diary of discovery--both of this place that captures imaginations, and of himself, all over again. Maps. Photos.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312261780
• ISBN13: 9780312261788
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

The Tough Sell

I am a doctor, and technical reading is a large part of my job. During nine years of college and three years of residency I accumulated an astronomical number of technical reading hours. I read to pass test and stay current... period. You will not see me reading the newspaper on Sunday morning, and as for letters from home, I ask my wife what they say. To read for fun, I don't think so. Until my mother sent me this book "Looking for Alaska" by Peter Jenkins. She knows my love for Alaska after cooking on a seiner in Ketchican, working in canneries in Kenai and Homer, and being a student doctor in Barrow and a doctor in Seward. Also I've been to Dead Horse where the pipe line starts and Valdez where it ends. So I get this book in the mail. The first thing I notice, is how heavy it is, it has 434 pages as I usually check before starting to read. I had just recently been recertified, passing boards again, so my technical reading was at a low. My reading time is one to two hours in the tub most mornings, I'm there right now writing this review. I get that particular habit honest, my dad, a retired school teacher, used to correct tests in the tub. My sister, a lawyer, studied her way through law school in the tub. So one morning I set a cup of coffee on the tub ledge right, and the cordless phone on the left and started Peter Jenkins book, "Looking for Alaska". The author moves his family to Seward, AK, to get the true Alaskan experience for his book. If you have never been to Alaska you can get there for the price of the book. If you have been there or live there now, Peter will take you to places you haven't been, or revisit some of your favorite towns. He doesn't try to impress you with poetic descriptions of sunsets- his writing is just real. When Peter goes fishing in Southeast Alaska and describes the feeding whales, you're there. To travel sixty miles by snow-machine, to experience bush living, you're riding along. During a dangerous encounter with brown bears, you're thinking, I know this guy walked across America but I still think I can outrun him. Next you're back in time whale-watching in Barrow. "Looking for Alaska," really captured the heart and soul of Alaskan life, and Alaskan people.

This guy nails Alaska.

Several years ago my boyfriend of the time, while I was a student at University of Michigan, told me that the book that inspired him to travel was A WALK ACROSS AMERICA.I didn't remember the writers name, I did remember his dogs name, Cooper, because it was the same as my brothers. I never read it, too much school work. But now I have read a Peter Jenkins book about the place I love more than any other place, ALASKA. I have worked here, on and off, for eight years, and LOOKING FOR ALASKA, thrills me with simple, yet often poetic prose. Peter Jenkins is a master story teller. His cast of characters is onen that could only exist up here, they ring very true. Peter paints the winter mountains pink AND orange, as only one who has been in this place in the winter can. The sections about his time on the ice with the Eskimo whalers; his journeys with his twenty year old daughter Rebekah,(and by the way her writing in this book is often excellent); his portrait of the retired sled dog Kitty (which brought tears to my eyes, as did his kayak trip with his daughter); the story about mouse trading; the Haida princess, Tina; and the two woman of Unalakleet, the Eskimo and the former Debutante are my favorites in a tour de force on ALASKA. Not since McPhee's COMING INTO THE COUNTRY have I read a book that moved me so about my only Frontier.

looking for alaska

I am a Native Alaskan. My people have been in Alaska before it was called ALASKA. I was given Peter Jenkins book as an early holiday gift from my Uncle and wondered if he captured my people and all our people, of all groups, because almost no writers/travelers ever have.He even found things I did not know about, like `mouse trading', from his Deering, Alaska chapter. Lines like this from the book lift me and illustrate his acute powers of perception, "Millie's voice is like a whisper but has incredible strength. I think the Eskimo way of speaking, soft, slow, focused, and songlike, comes from being listened to and from living surrounded by so much beautiful silence and life." Actually he has been to many more places in this 590,000 square mile place than almost any Alaskan I have known. There is hilarious, witty stuff,, like this section title: "These Athletes Eat Raw Meat, Run Naked and Sleep in the Snow." This is one white man that has a caring and discerning heart, this is by far, one of the best books on ALASKA I have ever read. We needed this kind of work here and I want to thank him for hearing my people, the Native Alaskans and all the rest of us, showing us as the alive and vivid world. Since graduating from UCLA I have yearned to be back in my homeland, for a few days reading LOOKING FOR ALASKA I have been.

An Excellent Work by the Author of A WALK ACROSS AMERICA

In 1973, Peter Jenkins set off with a backpack and his dog Cooper looking for America. He lived with and listened to people from every kind of life, learning much along the way. From his five-year adventure, he wrote two books: A Walk Across America and The Walk West.Jenkins now enjoys living on his 150-acre farm in Spring Hill, Tenn. Whenever his sedentary life becomes boring, however, he knows it's time to satisfy his wanderlust; otherwise, as he puts it, he would having nothing to write about. Stepping to the sound of a different drummer, Jenkins, accompanied by his wife Rita and daughters Rebekah and Julianne, trek northward to Alaska, "the Last Frontier," an austere land that does not suffer fools gladly. Alaskan winters are not for the faint of heart or tender of foot. In this land of snow, ice, and bitter cold, temperatures drop to sixty, eighty, or a hundred degrees below zero. True, it is a land where one can live one's dreams--even surpass one's dreams--but where dreams may turn into nightmares."Alaska makes people hallucinate," writes Jenkins. "It takes hold of you, it makes some believe there is no gravity. They can enter the power and purity of it and be uninjured, jump from a mountaintop and not land on the rocks below."From his "home base" of Seward, on the Kenai Peninsula, Jenkins travels to Hydaburg on Prince of Wales Island, and on to Tok, not far from the border of Yukon Territory, where he stays at a B & B named WinterCabin: "Where the Stars Sleep Beneath the Northern Lights."WinterCabin is owned and operated by Donna Blasor-Bernhardt, who has her annual "Before Winter List" of things to do (that must be done). Summertime in Alaska is a window of opportunity to prepare for the long, arduous winter ahead. "Winter in Tok," writes Jenkins, "needs to be spelled in all capital letters, WINTER."Jenkins describes the running of the Iditarod (from Anchorage to Nome). He travels by snow machine (Alaskans never call them snowmobiles) above the Arctic Circle to the delightful Jayne household (Eric, Vicky, Mike, Pete, Elizabeth, and Dan), some sixty miles from Coldfoot; visits Denali National Park and the Alaska Range; lives in Barrow, the northernmost town in the United States; and moves on to Kotzebue, Deering, and Unatakleet, near the Bering Strait and the closest Russian landfall."[Alaska] is filled with people determined to live as free as possible of others' intervention," writes Jenkins. "Alaska may have served as the incubator for the behavior now termed politically incorrect. They despise being herded; if they were sheep, they would never go off the cliff together. More than likely, they'd trample the shepherd."Peter Jenkins has experienced enough adventures for several lifetimes. In Looking for Alaska, perhaps the best book he has written, he will regale you with firsthand reports of life in our largest and coldest state. Jenkins didn't just zoom in and zoom out of Alaska; he lived among its people for eighteen months and won th

Inspiring

I first became acquainted with Peter Jenkins when I read "A Walk Across America" in 1991 while I was in graduate school. I quickly bought and read "The Walk West," "The Road Unseen," "Across China," and "Close Friends." These books inspired me to seek out new relationships and new experiences as I moved to Kazakhstan to teach tri-lingual students."Looking For Alaska" is a book that fits in well with Peter Jenkins former books. His style reflects a more mature and reflective Peter, but one that loves to relate to new people and places just as much as in "A Walk Across America."This is not a book that you will want to read fast, but one that you want to hold on to for as long as you can. I highly recommend this book. Peter Jenkins has allowed himself to live the adventures that we all secretly wish we could.