Fans pick 100 books like Frontier Spirit

I’ve been a novelist all my adult life. My first three books are novels about teenagers, regarded as pioneers in the genre of Young Adult fiction. My inspiration has always been real people, events, and places. Animals, especially dogs have always been part of my life. I turned to adult fiction because I felt the need to write about the full cast of life. City Wolves was inspired, if not driven by my first Malamute, Yukon Sally. With the research she led me to do into wolves, sled dogs, the history of women veterinarians, the real people who were part of the Klondike Gold Rush, I found some marvellous biographies, histories, biological studies, and poetry.

I’ve been a novelist all my adult life. My first three books are novels about teenagers, regarded as pioneers in the genre of Young Adult fiction. My inspiration has always been real people, events, and places. Animals, especially dogs have always been part of my life. I turned to adult fiction because I felt the need to write about the full cast of life. City Wolves was inspired, if not driven by my first Malamute, Yukon Sally. With the research she led me to do into wolves, sled dogs, the history of women veterinarians, the real people who were part of the Klondike Gold Rush, I found some marvellous biographies, histories, biological studies, and poetry.

I’ve been a novelist all my adult life. My first three books are novels about teenagers, regarded as pioneers in the genre of Young Adult fiction. My inspiration has always been real people, events, and places. Animals, especially dogs have always been part of my life. I turned to adult fiction because I felt the need to write about the full cast of life. City Wolves was inspired, if not driven by my first Malamute, Yukon Sally. With the research she led me to do into wolves, sled dogs, the history of women veterinarians, the real people who were part of the Klondike Gold Rush, I found some marvellous biographies, histories, biological studies, and poetry.

I’ve been a novelist all my adult life. My first three books are novels about teenagers, regarded as pioneers in the genre of Young Adult fiction. My inspiration has always been real people, events, and places. Animals, especially dogs have always been part of my life. I turned to adult fiction because I felt the need to write about the full cast of life. City Wolves was inspired, if not driven by my first Malamute, Yukon Sally. With the research she led me to do into wolves, sled dogs, the history of women veterinarians, the real people who were part of the Klondike Gold Rush, I found some marvellous biographies, histories, biological studies, and poetry.

My interest in the Klondike gold rush was sparked by a Canadian history course I took as an undergrad. Nearly all the accounts I read then relegated female participants to the sidelines and implied that most were of dubious moral character, but I suspected there was more to the story than that. I started digging and, unlike many Klondikers, I struck gold. Since then I’ve made numerous visits to the Yukon and Alaska, hiked the Chilkoot Trail twice and spent three months as Writer in Residence at Berton House in Dawson City (where I worked on my third gold rush book, Children of the Klondike). Today, I’m still captivated by this colorful, character-rich historic event.

My interest in the Klondike gold rush was sparked by a Canadian history course I took as an undergrad. Nearly all the accounts I read then relegated female participants to the sidelines and implied that most were of dubious moral character, but I suspected there was more to the story than that. I started digging and, unlike many Klondikers, I struck gold. Since then I’ve made numerous visits to the Yukon and Alaska, hiked the Chilkoot Trail twice and spent three months as Writer in Residence at Berton House in Dawson City (where I worked on my third gold rush book, Children of the Klondike). Today, I’m still captivated by this colorful, character-rich historic event.

Over my past 87 years, I have experienced a multitude of intimate relationships, including “falling in lust,” infidelity, “one-night stands,” one-week trysts to 40-year companionships, two marriages, and fatherhood, but the one that was most lasting and important to me was one of unconditional love.

I’ve had a passion for northern places ever since I was a kid. I prefer locales that boast plenty of nature and not very many human beings. I’ve been to Greenland 15 times, but only once to Paris and never to Rome (Rome in New York State once). The more remote the locale, the better. Which is why I’ve only once been to Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, but several times to almost never visited villages in East Greenland.

As a child, all I wanted to read were books about adventure. I also had an adventurous childhood, growing up in the Louisiana swamps with a father who actually hunted alligators and took me with him. As I came of age, I longed to tell stories, and, as they say, it’s best to write about what you know. To date, I’ve penned six novels, all set in the exotic wetlands of Cajun, Louisiana. I feel missionary about this—that my writing gifts allow me to decode my homeplace in a way that makes it easier for outsiders to see the singular niche it occupies on the American landscape. 

I’m Marsali Taylor, a retired teacher of English, French and Drama. I’ve always been interested in women’s history—not queens and countesses, but what life was like for ordinary people like me. A chance to research women’s suffrage in the Scottish National Library got me started reading these women’s stories in their own words—and what stories they were, from the first women graduates to the war workers. Women’s Suffrage in Shetland took two years of fascinating research, and I hope it’s the foundation for more work by other researchers, both here in Shetland and in other communities whose women fought for the vote.