The Way Winter Comes: Alaska Stories

Simpson's debut collection of essays about Alaska, winner of the 1997 Chinook Literary Prize, combines a refreshing voice and vision in a work that is part adventure, part meditation and part natural history lesson. With her distinctive brand of descriptive journalism, she's informative and captivating, lyrical without ever being maudlin, and philosophic without being preachy. Readers will trust the voice immediately because she speaks the language of the Alaskan landscape. Simpson blurs the line between spectator and participant by living the experiences she writes about, and brings readers with her as she tracks the myths and realities of ravens, moose, bears, wolves and winter itself: ""Summer carries you away, but winter inhabits you."" She goes beyond symbolism to probe the mystery of Alaska while acknowledging that it's a mystery that can never be solved. She doesn't gloss over vulnerabilities and contradictions of the landscape and animal nature--humanity and her own included. Ultimately, she wants readers to know that the landscape, although frozen, is alive with activity. ""Everything is going somewhere,"" she writes. In irresistible language, she bewitches the reader just as the Alaskan landscape has bewitched her. (Oct.)