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THE SUN IS A COMPASS

Name: THE SUN IS A COMPASS
Author: Caroline Van Hemert
ISBN: 978-0-316-41442-5

A 4,000-MILE JOURNEY INTO THE ALASKAN WILDS

by Caroline Van Hemert ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

One follows this engrossing adventure feeling as eager as the travelers to see what's around the next bend in the river, on...

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A research wildlife biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center recounts a stirring wilderness adventure set against the background of a young woman juggling family, career, and a passion for rough country.

From the Pacific rainforests of Washington state to a remote corner of the Alaskan Arctic, it was an often grueling, 4,000-mile journey by foot, skis, raft, and canoe that few would have attempted, even such experienced wilderness travelers as debut author Van Hemert and her husband, Pat. In 2012, the author, who had begun to question her devotion to science, and Pat, a home builder driven by wanderlust, embarked on an expedition that would succeed or fail on human power alone—no roads, no trails, no motors—and test the limits of their endurance on some of the harshest and most unforgiving terrain in the world. Van Hemert chronicles their journey in sharp, sometimes-harrowing detail, though not so minutely that the narrative bogs down in the exigencies of living in the wild. While she discusses their various triumphs and travails, the author fully expresses the wonder of what they saw and experienced, who they met along the way, the microcultures they encountered, and how the journey brought her back to a love of scientific inquiry (if not to a love of the laboratory). After a brief in-progress report, she opens with the couple's personal histories and motivations for undertaking the trip. What might have been perfunctory actually adds depth. For all the readers’ vicarious thrills and Van Hemert’s admirable writing, it is the author’s candor regarding her doubts and her appealing vulnerability that make this memoir so resonant.

One follows this engrossing adventure feeling as eager as the travelers to see what's around the next bend in the river, on the next island, across the next coastal passage, or over the next mountain pass.

Pub Date: March 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-316-41442-5

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Little, Brown Spark

Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)