Here are 86 books that Sivulliq fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a historian who knows women have long lived not-sad lives without children. I’ve spent years researching the full and vibrant lives women without children lived throughout history—lives that often were only possible becausethey didn’t have the responsibilities of motherhood. I’m also a woman living a decidedly not-sad life without kids. And yet, in popular imagination, a woman without kids must be longing to be a mother or grieving the fact that she isn’t. I know firsthand that it can be isolating not to have kids. But in writing about the sheer variety of lives non-mothers lived in the past, I’m trying to show that we’re not alone.
Unlike Ivey’s other book The Snow Child, which grapples with the grief of infertility (a book I also love!), this book considers the opportunities a life without children allows for.
It opens with Lieutenant Colonel Allan Forrester as he prepares to lead an expedition into Alaska in 1885. His wife, Sophie, is an explorer in her own right and plans to accompany him—until they realize she’s pregnant and decide she has to stay behind.
Spoiler: Sophie miscarries and learns she will likely never be able to carry a baby to term. But this isn’t an endpoint for Sophie: instead, it sets her on a path toward professional and creative success, as well as love and happiness in her marriage.
We’re used to reading about how motherhood gives life meaning—I loved Ivey’s portrait of how nothaving kids can do the same.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARDS 2016.
Set in the Alaskan landscape that she brought to stunningly vivid life in THE SNOW CHILD (a Sunday Times bestseller, Richard and Judy pick and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Eowyn Ivey's TO THE BRIGHT EDGE OF THE WORLD is a breathtaking story of discovery set at the end of the nineteenth century, sure to appeal to fans of A PLACE CALLED WINTER.
'A clever, ambitious novel' The Sunday Times
'Persuasive and vivid... what could be a better beach read than an Arctic adventure?' Guardian
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I grew up in a wilderness cabin in Alaska, surrounded by more wild animals than humans. For many years, I worked in the heavily male-dominated Alaskan fishing industry. I still work as a scientist in rural Alaska. I care passionately about the place, and the truthful stories written about it by people with deep roots and diverse backgrounds here.
As a kid growing up in Alaska, I daydreamed of venturing into the wilderness alone. I was hooked on the promise of adventure.
This book follows that dream as the author and her partner set off on an astonishing quest to traverse Alaska in homemade boats. Thoughtful, funny, and magical, it’s a tale of true love as well as near-death escapes.
During graduate school, as she conducted experiments on the peculiarly misshapen beaks of chickadees, ornithologist Caroline Van Hemert began to feel stifled in the isolated, sterile environment of the lab. Worried that she was losing her passion for the scientific research she once loved, she was compelled to experience wildness again, to be guided by the sounds of birds and to follow the trails of animals.
In March of 2012 she and her husband set off on a 4,000-mile wilderness journey from the Pacific rainforest to the Alaskan Arctic. Travelling by rowboat, ski, foot, raft and canoe, they explored northern…
I grew up in a wilderness cabin in Alaska, surrounded by more wild animals than humans. For many years, I worked in the heavily male-dominated Alaskan fishing industry. I still work as a scientist in rural Alaska. I care passionately about the place, and the truthful stories written about it by people with deep roots and diverse backgrounds here.
This book is the most gripping and true-to-life tale I’ve ever read about growing up in the wilderness. As a young boy in northern Alaska, the author learned as much from wolves as from his few friends.
Mesmerizingly beautiful, frightening, and touching, this book made me cry when I finished it.
Ordinary Wolves depicts a life different from what any of us has known: Inhuman cold, the taste of rancid salmon shared with shivering sled dogs, hunkering in a sod igloo while blizzards moan overhead. But this is the only world Cutuk Hawcley has ever known. Born and raised in the Arctic, he has learned to provide for himself by hunting, fishing, and trading. And yet, though he idolizes the indigenous hunters who have taught him how to survive, when he travels to the nearby Inupiaq village, he is jeered and pummeled by the native children for being white. When he…
Mia Lark is running out of options. There is only one way to change the score: the fantasy planet Revivium.
Armed with the powerful magic in the helm and the friendly AI, Hex that goes with it, Mia throws caution out the window. It’s time to find the main guildhall…
I’m a long-time Alaskan (and former Alaska writer laureate) with a passion for my place—its people, environment, and history. I’ve always read widely in its literature and have watched it mature from superficial “last frontier” stories into a complex and diverse wealth of authentic and well-told stories. Since 2015 I’ve reviewed books for the Anchorage Daily News and have made it my business to know and support the growing Alaska writing community. Alaska is particularly strong in nonfiction writing while fiction (other than mysteries and short stories) has been slower to develop, and I’ve chosen to highlight five examples of novels that present truths through imaginative leaps.
Set in Southeast Alaska, Jimmy Bluefeather honestly depicts both environmental and generational change.
A Tlingit-Norwegian canoe carver anticipates the end of his life while his grandson struggles with his own future and a whale biologist resists authority in favor of moral action. Heacox grounds his beautifully-written story in considerable research as well as with respect for cultural beliefs and practices.
The canoe carver in particular is well-drawn and memorable, with toughness, resilience, and humor earned from living close to the Earth and its waters, in a place of stories. A canoe journey carries the story into a wild landscape, questions about conflicts between economic development and the preservation of lands and cultural values, and understandings of human frailty and strength.
"Part quest, part rebirth, Heacox's debut novel spins a story of Alaska's Tlingit people and the land, an old man dying, and a young man learning to live." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A splendid, unique gem of a novel." -Library Journal (starred review)
"Heacox does a superb job of transcending his characters' unique geography to create a heartwarming, all-American story." -Booklist
"What makes this story so appealing is the character Old Keb. He is as finely wrought and memorable as any character in contemporary literature and energizes the tale with a humor and warmth…
I’m a long-time Alaskan (and former Alaska writer laureate) with a passion for my place—its people, environment, and history. I’ve always read widely in its literature and have watched it mature from superficial “last frontier” stories into a complex and diverse wealth of authentic and well-told stories. Since 2015 I’ve reviewed books for the Anchorage Daily News and have made it my business to know and support the growing Alaska writing community. Alaska is particularly strong in nonfiction writing while fiction (other than mysteries and short stories) has been slower to develop, and I’ve chosen to highlight five examples of novels that present truths through imaginative leaps.
Set in the 1990s, this very engaging novel tracks the arrival of a young, angry, and confused Tara Marconi to a southeast Alaska town and then follows her as she matures alongside a set of memorable and often damaged characters.
The depictions of small-town life and the fishing industry are well-wrought, as are the conflicts that many Alaskans face with themselves, their pasts, and the environment. This counts as a coming-of-age story but is unique in its depiction of a strong, smart, and adaptable young woman finding her true, independent self in a place where self-realization is not just allowed but encouraged.
At its most basic,The Alaskan Laundry is a testament to how places and spaces shape us, and how we find where we belong.
On the icy waters of the Bering Sea, a lost, fierce young woman finds herself through the hard work of fishing and the stubborn love of real friendship.
Tara Marconi has made her way from Philly to “the Rock,” a remote island in Alaska governed by the seasons. Her mother’s death left her unmoored, with a seemingly impassable rift between her and her father. But in this majestic, rugged frontier she works her way up the commercial fishing ladder—from hatchery assistant all the way to king crabber. Disciplined from years as a young boxer, she learns anew what it means…
I grew up in a wilderness cabin in Alaska, surrounded by more wild animals than humans. For many years, I worked in the heavily male-dominated Alaskan fishing industry. I still work as a scientist in rural Alaska. I care passionately about the place, and the truthful stories written about it by people with deep roots and diverse backgrounds here.
I loved this book because it told the inner story of Southeast Alaska, a place where I grew up, a story I had never truly known. Tragic yet also easily relatable, the book tells of a family both deeply injured by and standing up against institutionalized racism. This is the Alaska that tourists do not see but that is powerfully, achingly real.
In the spring, the bear returns to the forest, the glacier returns to its source, and the salmon returns to the fresh water where it was spawned. Drawing on the special relationship that the Native people of southeastern Alaska have always had with nature, Blonde Indian is a story about returning.
Told in eloquent layers that blend Native stories and metaphor with social and spiritual journeys, this enchanting memoir traces the author’s life from her difficult childhood growing up in the Tlingit community, through her adulthood, during which she lived for some time in Seattle and San Francisco, and eventually…
Winner of the 2024 New Mexico - Arizona Book Award.
In this deeply researched novel of America's most celebrated outlaw, Mark Warren sheds light on the human side of Billy the Kid and reveals the intimate stories of the lesser-known players in his legendary life of crime. Warren's fictional composer…
I grew up in a wilderness cabin in Alaska, surrounded by more wild animals than humans. For many years, I worked in the heavily male-dominated Alaskan fishing industry. I still work as a scientist in rural Alaska. I care passionately about the place, and the truthful stories written about it by people with deep roots and diverse backgrounds here.
I rarely find a book that captures the inner lives of wild animals and the strange, poignant ways they still can shape our human world. For many years, I fished in the waters Eva Saulitis writes of. I know the orca family she describes. Her writing is profoundly moving. I couldn't put it down.
Science entwines with matters of the human heart as a whale researcher chronicles the lives of an endangered family of orcas
Ever since Eva Saulitis began her whale research in Alaska in the 1980s, she has been drawn deeply into the lives of a single extended family of endangered orcas struggling to survive in Prince William Sound. Over the course of a decades-long career spent observing and studying these whales, and eventually coming to know them as individuals, she has, sadly, witnessed the devastation wrought by the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989—after which not a single calf has…
I love to read. I always have. I also love to write mysteries that, hopefully, keep my reader guessing until the end of the book. I look for books that not only provide me with a mystery to solve but also inform me of situations and/or places I would otherwise never learn about. I have found all the books on my list to fill that need. They are just an example of the many I have found and read.
I found this book suspenseful and couldn’t put it down. I was kept on the edge of my seat as to the fate of the characters until the end.
The fact that one of the characters was a Vietnam veteran and it affected his life interested me. I also found the setting of Alaska in the 1970s interesting and informative.
In Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone, a desperate family seeks a new beginning in the near-isolated wilderness of Alaska only to find that their unpredictable environment is less threatening than the erratic behavior found in human nature.
#1 New York Times Instant Bestseller (February 2018) A People “Book of the Week” Buzzfeed’s “Most Anticipated Women’s Fiction Reads of 2018” Seattle Times’s “Books to Look Forward to in 2018”
Alaska, 1974. Ernt Allbright came home from the Vietnam War a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes the impulsive decision to move his wife and daughter…
I have always had a passion for small towns, both real and fictional. After living in a bunch of them myself (in real life, not my head), I decided to try creating my own picture-perfect places. Like most writers, my love of books started with reading. I have read hundreds of wholesome, small-town romance novels, and I hope to read hundreds more! This list has some of my recent favorites. Bonus: All the books on this list are the first in a series, so if you love them, more swoonworthy stories await! (PS The list is in no particular order, I love each book equally!)
Small town that you will want a realtor for: Sunset Ridge, AK
I actually read this book after I started my Darling Men series, and it’s a good thing it happened in that order. Because if I had read Moose Be Love beforehand, I don’t think I would’ve bothered writing my series at all.
This book perfected the Alaskan small-town sweet romance! I definitely recommend it if you aren’t sure if you would rather get lost in a heartwarming story, or go on a vacation to Alaska. Good news, you don’t have to choose! Not with Moose Be Love in your personal library!
★★★★★From the moment I started reading, I was transported to the small town of Sunset Ridge where I spent the day. I ignored anything and everything that had to do with adulting. --Reviewer
★★★★★This could be Hallmark Alaska. Cheesy, fun, Alaska and then there’s Ed -the 2000 lb moose that has befriended the town of Sunset Ridge. --Reviewer
★★★★★ This is a wonderful book. If you like a deep good, page turner this the book for you. --Reviewer
★★★★★ What a fun book! I fell in love with Ed, the moose. And the town of Sunset Ridge, Alaska. What a…
Ramon Ramirez’s Dog is a collection of essays written over the years about the adventures and misadventures, mostly outside but occasionally inside the diplomatic career of a U.S. ambassador. Common threads weaving the stories together are a desire for a life well-lived, balancing career with family and friends, keeping physically…
I have a passion for the written word and the art of storytelling. Though I’m not a fatalist, I’ve had a lifelong interest in stories and films about cataclysm and apocalyptic tales, regardless of scale. Films like Poseidon’s Adventure, The Towering Inferno, and all of the both good and bad zombie movies the years have produced were mainstays in my childhood. Seeing how ordinary people responded to extraordinary circumstances to overcome and sometimes succumb to their frailties have been driving influences for me. I try to reflect that point of view through the characters in my novels. I think those moments have a way of defining our own humanity.
Don Reardon crafts a tale of utter isolation and deprivation. Set in a remote Alaskan village that is suddenly and remorselessly struck with a virulent and deadly strain of influenza or some other similar malady. Quarantined from the rest of Alaska and the world, most of the inhabitants die from the illness leaving the survivors the grim, brutal task of surviving by whatever means possible. With no food coming into the village and winter firmly set upon them, living or dying becomes a question of what people are willing to do for and to one another.
John Morgan and his wife can barely contain their excitement upon arriving as the new teachers in a Yup’ik village on the windswept Alaskan tundra. Lured north in search of adventure, the couple hope to immerse themselves in the ancient Arctic culture. But their move proves disastrous when a deadly epidemic strikes and the isolated community descends into total chaos. When outside help fails to arrive, John’s only hope lies in escaping the snow covered tundra and the hunger of the other survivors by making the thousand-mile trek across the Alaskan wilderness for help. Along the way, he encounters a…
