The Wake of the Unseen Object

Travels Through Alaska's Native Landscapes

by Tom Kizzia

“In the course of a two-year odyssey . . . Kizzia visited numerous native settlements, interviewed leaders and followers, and wrote the feature articles that make up this charming, informative book. . . . Kizzia writes a clear, unobtrusive prose that crystallizes in memorable images.”—Washington Post.

“A boatful of native Alaskans slapping downriver through the chop on their way to the biggest softball game of the season. A hunter singing the old songs for hunting luck, as he snowmobiles onto the ice with his rifle. Such contrasts—Eskimo and outsider, ancient and modern—run through Tom Kizzia’s chronicle of travels in the Alaska bush in search of ‘ancestral landscapes.’”—Smithsonian.

“Kizzia writes with a quiet compassion that brings the people and their hard land clearly into focus.”—Boston Globe.

“Kizzia . . . is a thoughtful and lyrical writer who manages to be sensitive without veering into sentimentality. . . . [He] joined Eskimos and Athabaskan Indians in steambaths and softball games. He visited their homes and their Russian Orthodox churches and their fishing camps. He even went on a ruthless whale hunt with two young Eskimos, a skiff and a .22-caliber rifle. A careful and sympathetic observer.”—Philadelphia Inquirer.

Tom Kizzia is a journalist at the Anchorage Daily News.

288 pp — ©1998