Sweet Home Alaska

I've been meaning to read this one for several years so thank you for spurring me onward. It is set in the very valley that I grew up in and involves the history of the nearest town. Add frontier life, the start of a public library, and family members named after Greek muses, and there was no way I was passing on this one!

            Eleven year old Terpsichore Johnson and her family live in Wisconsin and the year is 1934, during the Great Depression. Times are hard, and in search of a better life, Terpsichore's father applies for the family to be part of President Roosevelt's Palmer Colony Project, a ploy to get families to move to the wilds of Alaska and begin to colonize the wilderness. With Terpsichore's help, her family is chosen, gets their medical clearance, and leaves on the train only two days later!

            Despite the publicity, the Palmer Colony is not quite ready for the settlers and they have to live in tents for the first summer. Terpsichore's mother, Clio, had to sell her piano to move to Alaska and longs for the “civilized society” of Madison, Wisconsin.  There isn't a church or a library or even a hospital in the Palmer Colony!

            But that doesn't deter Terpsichore! She sets about changing things, making them as home-like as possible. She and her friend, Gloria (named after the early film star Gloria Swanson) set about building a library, and Terpsichore single-handedly opens a hospital by sending a telegram to Mrs Roosevelt about the urgent need for one after several children die in an epidemic of scarlet fever.

            She's a go-getter, is Terpsichore, and decides that the way to entice her mother to let the family stay is to replace her piano. So she goes about growing the biggest vegetable for the contest at the state fair, copying Almanzo's method of growing pumpkins outlined in her favorite book, Farmer Boy. Along the way, she comes to appreciate the annoyingly precocious neighbor boy, Mendel, and she meets an old-timer who “shows them the ropes.”

            I enjoyed so much about this book. Seeing “the Butte,” “the Matanuska Valley,” “Hatcher's Pass,” and “Pioneer Peak” in print was like a balm to my soul. I felt validated that someone else has seen and appreciated my “home.” Visualizing some vague historical concepts like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Roosevelt's fireside chats, and the tragic death of Will Rogers and Wiley Post, in a real-life setting was eye-opening. And have you ever thought about when “dental appliances” were experimental?

            However (you knew this was coming, didn't you?), there were more instances than I would have liked of a modern sensibility creeping into a work that is set in a historical time period. I am of a certain age and do not have blinders on. I can't believe that an adult in a rural setting in 1934 doesn't know how to work the damper on a stove, or filet a fish, or wash diapers in a bucket with a plunger. I don't believe that anyone would have been squeamish about a “barbaric scene of fish murder” or eating a moose (or any wild game) or touching bug eggs or using an outhouse. My father was alive during this time period and his family ate ANYTHING they could catch with a snare. Using an outhouse in Alaska was no big deal through the 1980s at least.

             Now, your students probably won't notice these inconsistencies, but they disturbed my enjoyment of the story. A few annoying inaccuracies also trickled down that maybe only an Alaskan would notice. In this time period in Alaska, I don't believe anyone would express the fear that sled dogs are dangerous, that separate summer and winter houses would be built, that separate bedrooms for all the children are desirable, that mid-May is past the danger of frost and “safe” for planting a garden. No steam would have arisen from the ground after a summer rain, the temperature would probably not have been “almost 90 degrees”, and Terpsichore (of Scandanavian descent) would NOT have gotten a tan from working in her garden. The building of houses would not have been finished over the winter, nobody called picking berries “foraging,”, and what is “down below?” Do they mean “outside?”

            This is an interesting story and setting with a delightful heroine but the execution is riddled with inaccuracies. If we don't have historical fiction that is well-written and well-researched, how will students ever learn to recognize modern sensibilities when they come across them? And how will they learn how it really WAS? They weren't there, so we have to be able to trust that the story is telling the truth.

            The whole thing leaves me shaking my head and wondering if the editors for this book are the youngest ever assembled and why on earth there wasn't an Alaskan on the editorial board.

Content considerations

Nothing of much consequence. On the ferry the family is given an “upchuck” bucket to be sick in, when they first arrive Terpsichore is teased and called “Trip” because she is missing a shoelace, Terpsichore and her mother are both squeamish about having to touch fish fillets to can them.