A couple of weird tales that depict the wildness of Alaska
Vick Mickunas
Two of the finest novels I have read lately are set in Alaska. These stories take place primarily in remote locales in the Alaskan countryside. One is set in the past, the other takes place in the not too distant future.
“How Quickly She Disappears” by Raymond Fleischmann” (Berkley, 309 pages, $26)
Raymond Fleischmann’s first published novel is a mystery set during the early 1940s. WWII was already raging in Asia and Europe. As the book opens, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was still five months away.
Elizabeth is living in an isolated community with her husband and their precocious young daughter. They moved there after her husband was hired to be a teacher in this village where most of the residents are Athabascan native people.
The place is so remote that it can only be accessed by airplanes. Bush pilots fly in to deliver supplies and mail. Elizabeth is waiting for the mail plane to appear when her world suddenly goes all topsy-turvy.
The man who delivers the mail that day isn’t the regular pilot.
This man claims he needs to do some repairs on his plane. He asks if he can stay with Elizabeth and her family while he does that? I won’t spoil this engrossing fiction by telling you much more about the plot or that pilot. Suffice it to say that this man eventually tells Elizabeth he has information about a horrifying incident from her past. She will do almost anything to make him reveal what he knows.
“What Is Time to a Pig?” by John Straley (Soho, 255 pages, $27.95)
John Straley just published “What Is Time To a Pig?,” the third book in his Cold Storage series. Cold Storage is the name of the small coastal town where this series takes place. This latest one opens on Oct. 31, 2027.
Straley sets the stage: “It was seven years after the US President’s war with North Korea, and the whole world had gone a little crazy. It was as if all the bottled-up frustration of the administration, the repressed class hatred and racism, the fear of the Other, and the unquenched greed had started to spray from sprinkler systems in every office, every classroom, every store, and every network in the country: icy water raining down through highpressure rubber tubes onto everything and everyone. All bets were off, and the future was chaos. At least that’s how it seemed.”
Gloomy Knob is a prison inmate. By 2027 the prison industry is booming in Alaska.
Many prisoners work in telephone call centers. Some, like Gloomy, are being interrogated. They torture them and drug them to make them confess.
The North Koreans fired a nuclear missile and intact nuclear warheads were scattered all about. When will they detonate? It is a race between the government and potential terrorists to try to locate these errant warheads. Scary stuff, eh? As per usual, Straley writes brilliantly.
Book Nook
Vick Mickunas of Yellow Springs interviews authors every Saturday at 7 a.m. and on Sundays at 10:30 a.m. on WYSO-FM (91.3). For more information, visit www. wyso.org/programs/booknook. Contact him at vick@ vickmickunas.com.