The Way Winter Comes: Alaska Stories

Two winters back, over a lunch of dried caribou along the Arctic’s Noatak River, Alaskan writer Seth Kantner told me I had to read Sherry Simpson’s The Way Winter Comes. First published a decade ago and awarded the Chinook Literary Prize, this little-known collection of essays immerses readers in short scenes of northern wilderness, animals, and people. Juneau-born Simpson’s journalistic accounts of everyday Alaska—“I ride behind a North Pole trapper named Phil on his Tabasco-red snowmachine”—intertwine with graceful lyricism—“In winter the flat, frozen surface of the upper Chena River becomes a boulevard for wildlife, where tracks inscribe a calligraphy of motion in the snow. Everything is going somewhere.” Seth was right. If this book had a spirit animal, it would be the wolverine: small in stature and surprisingly badass. Get the original hardcover if you can, or wait for the forthcoming version from Shorefast Editions.