LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY DAD

Part travelogue and woodlore, part lecture in family relations, scarcely any story at all: Let Me. . . tells of a summer in Alaska where the motherless narrator learns that his father can fix a broken leg, drive a bulldozer, shoot a bear, handle an ax, and direct his friends in building a log cabin. ""I guess other people are the way he is,"" concludes the boy. ""You think there's nothing special about them, and then you find that they can do all kinds of things. . . . "" Not so the story.