“And beneath all this, the land remains, as it was then,
wild and serene and withholding, bountiful and remote…”
-from the new introduction to The Wake of the Unseen Object
“Challenging the presumptions of the dominant culture — looking from a distance back toward the alien spaceship of Anchorage — was a deep theme of this project from the start. . .”
A new edition of the classic work
of Alaska travel writing and journalism
from University of Alaska Press
With a new introduction by the author
A journey to Alaska’s remote roadless villages, during a time of great historical transition, brings us this enduring portrait of a place and its people.
Alutiiq, Yup’ik, Inupiaq, and Athabascan subjects reveal themselves as entirely contemporary individuals with deep longings and connection to the land and to their past. Tom Kizzia’s account of his travels off the Alaska road system, first published in 1991, has endured with a sterling reputation for its thoughtful, poetic, unflinching engagement with the complexity of Alaska’s rural communities. The Wake of the Unseen Object is now considered some of the finest nonfiction writing about Alaska.
This new edition includes an updated introduction by the author, looking at what remains the same after thirty years and what is different--both in Alaska, and in the expectations placed on a reporter visiting from another world.
ORDER: University of Alaska Press | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org | Homer Bookstore
“A forgotten classic—not only one of the top books about Alaska Native culture, but one of the best Alaska books ever . . . Every bit as fresh and relevant today as it was a quarter century ago.” - Nick Jans, author of A Wolf Called Romeo and contributing editor, Alaska Magazine
Praise for the original edition (Henry Holt, 1991):
Cited by the Alaska Historical Society in its 2006 survey of Alaska’s best non-fiction and history books.
“Kizzia writes with a quiet compassion that brings the people and their hard land clearly into focus.” - Boston Globe
“A charming, informative book . . . Kizzia writes a clear, unobtrusive prose that crystallizes in memorable images.” - The Washington Post
“Kizzia is a thoughtful and lyrical writer who manages to be sensitive without veering into sentimentality . . A careful and sympathetic observer.” - Philadelphia Inquirer
“There is a great deal of unusual information in Mr. Kizzia’s book, briskly and unpretentiously presented. There is also an implied warning: travel in the Alaskan bush is a hard and chancy business.” - The Atlantic
“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 lets Alaska speak for itself. As a result, he has produced one of the most unassuming but haunting books about the state ever written . . . It is not really a memoir, or a travel book, or a collection of nature essays, or a work of cultural history. At different moments, it manages to be all of these.” - Tacoma News-Tribune
“A very worthwhile journey that spawns important insights for cynics and naïve romantics alike, whether academic or lay readers.” - Royal Anthropological Institute
“A broad canvas - Kizzia covers everything from Orthodox church services to a dinner of moose shoulder - and an unsentimental perspective make this a sturdy introduction to America’s last frontier.” - Kirkus Reviews