The first flesh-and-blood players to appear in “Alaska” come in the form of mastodons and woolly mammoths that migrated freely from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge to live on Alaska’s lush Arctic plains. With Alaska being among the newest and most volatile of the planet’s topographies, it is even more credible that this novel should feature the terrain as a major player.

The social implications of continental drift are a pet subject of the author’s, but even the most cynical reader must admit to the credibility of the perception that our cultures are a product of their terrains. Using an effective blend of fact and fiction, Michener brings the subject from its days as a fledgling body of land all the way forward to existing legal and moral ramifications of Alaska’s land distribution. In true Michener form, “Alaska” covers a time span of about a billion years. For nearly 900 pages, a size befitting of its topic, “Alaska” takes the reader on a journey through one of the bleakest, richest, most foreboding and highly inviting territories in our Republic, if not the world. There’s more subject than predicate, if you will.īut that’s not to say that the subject is not a fascinating one. I say “study” rather than novel because in patented Michener style, “Alaska” reads more like a history of the United States’ largest member than it does an epic novel. In this lucid way does Michener, through one of his earliest characters, define the scope and reach of “Alaska,” his newest and most ambitious study. he could hear the laughter, the chuckling of the wind coming over a hill, the exhilaration of a whale breaching after a long submarine chase, the gaiety of a young fox chasing birds aimlessly, the wonderful, hallowed sound of a universe that does not care whether a man finds refuge or not so long as he enjoys the irreverent pleasure of the search.”

Michener alaska