Here are 85 books that Jimmy Bluefeather fans have personally recommended if you like
Jimmy Bluefeather.
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I’m a historian who knows women have long lived not-sad lives without children. I’ve spent years researching the full and vibrant lives women without children lived throughout history—lives that often were only possible becausethey didn’t have the responsibilities of motherhood. I’m also a woman living a decidedly not-sad life without kids. And yet, in popular imagination, a woman without kids must be longing to be a mother or grieving the fact that she isn’t. I know firsthand that it can be isolating not to have kids. But in writing about the sheer variety of lives non-mothers lived in the past, I’m trying to show that we’re not alone.
Unlike Ivey’s other book The Snow Child, which grapples with the grief of infertility (a book I also love!), this book considers the opportunities a life without children allows for.
It opens with Lieutenant Colonel Allan Forrester as he prepares to lead an expedition into Alaska in 1885. His wife, Sophie, is an explorer in her own right and plans to accompany him—until they realize she’s pregnant and decide she has to stay behind.
Spoiler: Sophie miscarries and learns she will likely never be able to carry a baby to term. But this isn’t an endpoint for Sophie: instead, it sets her on a path toward professional and creative success, as well as love and happiness in her marriage.
We’re used to reading about how motherhood gives life meaning—I loved Ivey’s portrait of how nothaving kids can do the same.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARDS 2016.
Set in the Alaskan landscape that she brought to stunningly vivid life in THE SNOW CHILD (a Sunday Times bestseller, Richard and Judy pick and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Eowyn Ivey's TO THE BRIGHT EDGE OF THE WORLD is a breathtaking story of discovery set at the end of the nineteenth century, sure to appeal to fans of A PLACE CALLED WINTER.
'A clever, ambitious novel' The Sunday Times
'Persuasive and vivid... what could be a better beach read than an Arctic adventure?' Guardian
I grew up in a wilderness cabin in Alaska, surrounded by more wild animals than humans. For many years, I worked in the heavily male-dominated Alaskan fishing industry. I still work as a scientist in rural Alaska. I care passionately about the place, and the truthful stories written about it by people with deep roots and diverse backgrounds here.
This book is the most gripping and true-to-life tale I’ve ever read about growing up in the wilderness. As a young boy in northern Alaska, the author learned as much from wolves as from his few friends.
Mesmerizingly beautiful, frightening, and touching, this book made me cry when I finished it.
Ordinary Wolves depicts a life different from what any of us has known: Inhuman cold, the taste of rancid salmon shared with shivering sled dogs, hunkering in a sod igloo while blizzards moan overhead. But this is the only world Cutuk Hawcley has ever known. Born and raised in the Arctic, he has learned to provide for himself by hunting, fishing, and trading. And yet, though he idolizes the indigenous hunters who have taught him how to survive, when he travels to the nearby Inupiaq village, he is jeered and pummeled by the native children for being white. When he…
I’m a long-time Alaskan (and former Alaska writer laureate) with a passion for my place—its people, environment, and history. I’ve always read widely in its literature and have watched it mature from superficial “last frontier” stories into a complex and diverse wealth of authentic and well-told stories. Since 2015 I’ve reviewed books for the Anchorage Daily News and have made it my business to know and support the growing Alaska writing community. Alaska is particularly strong in nonfiction writing while fiction (other than mysteries and short stories) has been slower to develop, and I’ve chosen to highlight five examples of novels that present truths through imaginative leaps.
Set in the 1990s, this very engaging novel tracks the arrival of a young, angry, and confused Tara Marconi to a southeast Alaska town and then follows her as she matures alongside a set of memorable and often damaged characters.
The depictions of small-town life and the fishing industry are well-wrought, as are the conflicts that many Alaskans face with themselves, their pasts, and the environment. This counts as a coming-of-age story but is unique in its depiction of a strong, smart, and adaptable young woman finding her true, independent self in a place where self-realization is not just allowed but encouraged.
At its most basic,The Alaskan Laundry is a testament to how places and spaces shape us, and how we find where we belong.
On the icy waters of the Bering Sea, a lost, fierce young woman finds herself through the hard work of fishing and the stubborn love of real friendship.
Tara Marconi has made her way from Philly to “the Rock,” a remote island in Alaska governed by the seasons. Her mother’s death left her unmoored, with a seemingly impassable rift between her and her father. But in this majestic, rugged frontier she works her way up the commercial fishing ladder—from hatchery assistant all the way to king crabber. Disciplined from years as a young boxer, she learns anew what it means…
I grew up in a wilderness cabin in Alaska, surrounded by more wild animals than humans. For many years, I worked in the heavily male-dominated Alaskan fishing industry. I still work as a scientist in rural Alaska. I care passionately about the place, and the truthful stories written about it by people with deep roots and diverse backgrounds here.
This book tells of Indigenous resistance to white colonizers in northern Alaska and the fierceness of a mother’s love as she fights to save her daughter from kidnapping.
Lily Tuzroyluk’s voice is fresh and utterly compelling. She writes of a place she knows. This book both broke my heart and thrilled me.
In the spring of 1893, arctic Alaska is devastated by smallpox. Kayaliruk knows it is time to light the funeral pyres and leave their home. With her surviving children, she packs their dog sled and they set off to find family. Kayaliruk wakes with a bleeding scalp and no memory of the last day. Her daughter was stolen by Yankee whalers, her sons say. They begin chasing the ship, through arctic storms, across immeasurable distances, slipping into the Yankee whalers' town on Herschel Island, and to the enemy shores of Siberia. Ibai, an African American whaler, grew up in New…
I’m a huge fan of Alaska—a landscape of unforgiving weather patterns, inaccessible terrain, savage animals, and undeniable pristine beauty. I’m also a nature lover and spend as much time outdoors as possible, often hiking and marveling at spectacular vistas like those found in The Damnable Legacy. But I’m also an avid observer of the human race and am fascinated by all sorts of behaviors: why we pursue our passions, how we love and grieve, and whether we can really change who we are at the core.
I’m recommending Raven Stole the Moonfor a few reasons. First, it addresses maternal guilt and loss, which are important themes in my novel. Second, it incorporates Native Alaskan mysticism, drawing on the author’s Tlingit heritage. I am always intrigued by spiritual lore, and one of my characters, who also has a Native Alaskan background, relies on nature to anticipate—or even predict—the future. And finally, I’m an overall fan of the author (who also wrote The Art of Racing in the Rain) and found the book to be entertaining—and let’s face it, entertainment is one of the key reasons we read!
In this haunting debut, Garth Stein brilliantly invokes his Native American heritage and its folklore to create a mesmerising supernatural thriller. When Jenna Rosen, a grieving young mother, returns to the remote Alaskan town where her young son drowned, she discovers that the truth about her son's death is shrouded in legend - and buried in a terrifying netherworld between life and death. Armed with nothing but a mother's protective instincts, Jenna's quest for the truth is about to pull her into a terrifying and life changing abyss. Helped by a young man who falls in love with her, Jenna…
My debut mystery novel takes place in Alaska, a setting I love and think has a distinct personality of its own. My historical novel in progress is set in Hawaii, where I grew up, and it reflects the particular diverse culture of this nostalgic venue. Another work-in-progress is set in post-apocalyptic Argentina–you can see the pattern here. Having a cast of interesting, believable characters is essential–but bringing them to life in compelling locales enriches and enlarges the story, in my mind. So many wonderful books skillfully fulfill these requirements–I hope you’ll agree these are among the best in the mystery genre!
It’s no secret that I have a real fondness for Alaska–its landscape, people, and singular quirkiness. Southeast Alaska, where this novel is set, is its own idiosyncratic microcosm.
The bars for serious drinking, the sideways rain, the grab bag of misfit characters–is John Straley at his best in this novel. In his no-holds-barred yet fond portrayal of Alaska, where his protagonist spends most of his days in an alcoholic but observant haze, the 49th state is like a walk-on character actor who ends up eating the scenery.
The First Cecil Younger investigation set in Sitka, Alaska
Cecil Younger, local Alaskan investigator, is neither good at his job nor great at staying sober. When an old Tlingit woman, unimpressed by the police’s investigation, hires him to discover why her son, a big game guide, was murdered, he takes the case without much conviction that he’ll discover anything new. But after a failed assassination attempt and the discovery of previously missed evidence, Younger finds himself traveling across Alaska to discover the truth in a midst of conspiracies, politics, and Tlingit mythology. High drama meets local color as Cecil Younger…
I grew up in a wilderness cabin in Alaska, surrounded by more wild animals than humans. For many years, I worked in the heavily male-dominated Alaskan fishing industry. I still work as a scientist in rural Alaska. I care passionately about the place, and the truthful stories written about it by people with deep roots and diverse backgrounds here.
I loved this book because it told the inner story of Southeast Alaska, a place where I grew up, a story I had never truly known. Tragic yet also easily relatable, the book tells of a family both deeply injured by and standing up against institutionalized racism. This is the Alaska that tourists do not see but that is powerfully, achingly real.
In the spring, the bear returns to the forest, the glacier returns to its source, and the salmon returns to the fresh water where it was spawned. Drawing on the special relationship that the Native people of southeastern Alaska have always had with nature, Blonde Indian is a story about returning.
Told in eloquent layers that blend Native stories and metaphor with social and spiritual journeys, this enchanting memoir traces the author’s life from her difficult childhood growing up in the Tlingit community, through her adulthood, during which she lived for some time in Seattle and San Francisco, and eventually…
I've never been anything but a writer, despite growing up and spending my first 50 years in Alaska. Alaska has been my major topic—what else could it be in that overwhelmingly powerful place?—but it has also been my frustration, because Alaska is a real place that exists in most readers’ minds only as a romantic vision, and they resist any other version. Like the real Eskimos in my book, whose world is melting from climate change as they pump millions of barrels of crude oil from their homeland. The writers I chose are all Alaskans, like me, who tell those stories about the magical, terrifying place that lies behind the Disney version you already know.
This is an ancient, novel-length tale of a hero in the Alaska wilderness near the dawn of time, confronting the cruelty and grief endemic in a world in which survival always hangs on the luck and skill of the hunter. Oman, who died in 2018 at 102, told me 30 years ago about holding onto the Qayaq story, even through the years when her cultural practices were effectively outlawed. She grew up at a time in Kotzebue when her father, a shaman, could only tell the ancient stories of her Inupiaq people at night, in secret, vouchsafing them with her for another generation. As an adult she continued collecting them, and then, in her old age, published this graceful and haunting story, which seems to reach to us from another world.
This is a splendid presentation of an ancient northern story cycle, brought to life by Lela Kiana Oman, who has been retelling and writing the legends of the Inupiat of the Kobuk Valley, Alaska, nearly all her adult life. In the mid-1940s, she heard these tales from storytellers passing through the mining town of Candle, and translated them from Inupiaq into English. Now, after fifty years, they illuminate one of the world's most vibrant mythologies. The hero is Qayaq, and the cycle traces his wanderings by kayak and on foot along four rivers - the Selawik, the Kobuk, the Noatak…
I grew up on the Delaware River and took my first canoe trip around 12. Later, in my teens, I worked for a canoe outfitter. During college, I took several longer trips with friends. When a father, I would bring my kids and family along, often with a dog. Later, I would paddle the whole stretch of it, 200 miles from the headwaters to my boyhood home, which I wrote about in my book. To write it, I reread many of these books, including Powell and Graves, who also paddled with his dog. Mine, Sully, joined me on my 9-day trip.
McPhee refers to the “gin-clear” water of Alaskan rivers, and his prose is equally lucid. It is also dense with facts, each sentence packed like a canoe or loaded raft. Serialized in the New Yorker in the 1970s, the “The Encircled River” section describes his canoe journey down a 60-mile segment of Salmon River, the most northern river above the Arctic Circle.
With four others who worked for the U.S. government, they studied the river as a national wild river Congress would be voting on to become part of the Kobuk Valley National Monument. The legislation passed under Jimmy Carter on December 2, 1980. Pair with his Survival of a Birch Bark Canoe.
Coming into the Country is an unforgettable account of Alaska and Alaskans. It is a rich tapestry of vivid characters, observed landscapes, and descriptive narrative, in three principal segments that deal, respectively, with a total wilderness, with urban Alaska, and with life in the remoteness of the bush.
Readers of McPhee's earlier books will not be unprepared for his surprising shifts of scene and ordering of events, brilliantly combined into an organic whole. In the course of this volume we are made acquainted with the lore and techniques of placer mining, the habits and legends of the barren-ground grizzly, the…
I have always had a passion for small towns, both real and fictional. After living in a bunch of them myself (in real life, not my head), I decided to try creating my own picture-perfect places. Like most writers, my love of books started with reading. I have read hundreds of wholesome, small-town romance novels, and I hope to read hundreds more! This list has some of my recent favorites. Bonus: All the books on this list are the first in a series, so if you love them, more swoonworthy stories await! (PS The list is in no particular order, I love each book equally!)
Small town that you will want a realtor for: Sunset Ridge, AK
I actually read this book after I started my Darling Men series, and it’s a good thing it happened in that order. Because if I had read Moose Be Love beforehand, I don’t think I would’ve bothered writing my series at all.
This book perfected the Alaskan small-town sweet romance! I definitely recommend it if you aren’t sure if you would rather get lost in a heartwarming story, or go on a vacation to Alaska. Good news, you don’t have to choose! Not with Moose Be Love in your personal library!
★★★★★From the moment I started reading, I was transported to the small town of Sunset Ridge where I spent the day. I ignored anything and everything that had to do with adulting. --Reviewer
★★★★★This could be Hallmark Alaska. Cheesy, fun, Alaska and then there’s Ed -the 2000 lb moose that has befriended the town of Sunset Ridge. --Reviewer
★★★★★ This is a wonderful book. If you like a deep good, page turner this the book for you. --Reviewer
★★★★★ What a fun book! I fell in love with Ed, the moose. And the town of Sunset Ridge, Alaska. What a…
