She is presently setting up an open house for the sale of her longtime residence, known locally as “Howl Palace.” Interspersed throughout the preparations for the real-estate event are her recollections and reflections on a long line of husbands and lovers, including, most notably, an older man named Carl, “the beautiful, bedeviling heartbreak of my life.”Īmong other things, Dutch bemoans the complacent citizenry of modern-day Alaska, while imagining a black Lab named Pinkie making her escape from domestic life: In her late 60s, Dutch has married five times, been a widow once. “… no matter how you deal with these animals at home-stick or carrot-they just can’t deviate from the agenda panting through their minds, an agenda born of instinct and inbreeding, neither of which suggests that they sit there wagging their tails when a bumblebee flies through a yard. Dutch, the narrator of “Howl Palace,” the opening story (and among the strongest in the collection), has strong feelings about black Labs, having raised a slew of them in her long lifetime. In these stories, men (and in some cases, women and children) camp in the wild, fish for king salmon, paddle down the turbulent Deshka river, and hunt wolves from single-prop planes.ĭogs are a recurring motif.
Leigh Newman, author of a new story collection, Nobody Gets Out Alive, emerges as a contender in this narrowly defined literary sweepstakes. Of course, more recent novels are also set in the Last Frontier, but not many come readily to mind. What novels come to mind when thinking about the 49 th state? There’s Call of the Wild by Jack London and, in a different vein entirely, Alaska by James Michener. Of all the states in the union, Alaska might be among the most underrepresented in literature.
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