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175 of 192 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Arctic Homestead: Do not believe every thing you read!, January 13, 2002
Arctic Homestead is a simply written collection of short stories that chronicles the struggles of the Cobb family as they "prove up" their homestead. It is very light reading and should not take more than an afternoon to read through. While it will not go down as a great book, it does provide some entertaining reading. There are certainly better and more accurate books written about homesteading in the bush of Alaska, but this book does give the reader a sense of what interior Alaska was like in the mid to late 70's. Just take some of what you read with a healthy "grain of salt." This book is of particular interest to me because I lived with the Cobbs on their Lost Creek Ranch Homestead from June of 1978 to January of 1979. My name is Ken Nelson and my time with the Cobbs is erroneously summarized in Chapter 67. Norma mistakenly identifies this time as 1981. Norma Cobb, as comes through clearly in the book, tends to be quite a paranoid individual. She always fears the worst is going to happen in any situation and almost instinctively distrusts anyone outside of her family. You will notice as you read the book that she also tends to manipulate facts in her stories to place her family in the best possible light. Les is a driven man and is willing to bend the law and truth to fit his particular needs. While I always liked Les in spite of himself and generally admired Norma for her grit and determination to keep her family together in the wilderness, I was never fully able to accept that their way of getting ahead was right. Too many relationships were destroyed because of her paranoia and their willingness to destroy anyone and anything that might possibly threaten their way of life. My relationship with them was also mostly destroyed through this paranoia even though I wasn't driven off under gun point or blasted out with dynamite. Read the book for stories of people who were. Les and Norma had promised me the Oh Brother cabin and 5 acres of land with it if I would stay and help educate their children over the winter of 1978 and help Les with the work on the homestead. This I fully intended to do until circumstances made me decide it would be best for me to leave in January of 1979. Les had once again left the homestead looking for work. Norma had basically thrown him out and was threatening to divorce him. There is much more to this story than I care to disclose here to protect all of the parties involved in the situation. Never the less, shortly before I decided it was best that I leave, Norma had made the twins, Cora and Cara, move in with me in the Oh Brother cabin since they were Les's kids and not hers. I was only 21 at the time and did not feel fully prepared to take care of 5 year old twin girls in spite of the fact that they were very sweet and cooperative. Also, I had recently become engaged during the visit of my California girl friend, Donell, and was anxious to get back nearer to her. In the book, Norma comes across as a devoted and almost worshipful wife. While this was true much of the time, Les and Norma were not immune to the factors that strain marriages of blended families. Also, living as they were, there were even more stresses than usual to threaten their marriage. Les was often gone months at a time. I give Norma credit for sticking with Les even when she had legitimate reasons for breaking up their marriage. Les also had the presence of mind to keep things patched up between him and Norma because he knew that he would fail if she were to leave him. All of these problems were mostly ignored in the telling of this story even though you get hints of it every now and then. The biggest shock for me came when I read that I was credited with letting most of their dogs die while the Cobbs were gone. I had stayed alone on the homestead while they were gone in order to take care of their dogs. One dog, Arrow, had suddenly and unexpectedly refused to go any farther while in harness on a return trip from Rampart. I had taken him out of harness because the other dogs were just dragging him along. I expected him to follow us home but I never saw him again. He later turned up dead under a cabin in Rampart. This was very upsetting to me as Arrow was a very friendly dog that I had come to love. Dogs in the bush had no veterinary care and almost no vaccines. It was easy for canine diseases to pass from one team to another. Native dogs teams had spent the night with me on the homestead and I had staked out my dogs with teams in Rampart. Arrow must have contracted a deadly disease, but I'll never know for sure. All of the other dogs along with around 15 new pups that came while they were gone were still alive when I left. Arrow's death coupled with the necessity to clean up a large amount of dog feces that had been buried in the deep winter snow the next spring made her concoct a story that I must have neglected the dogs. While I freely admit that there were days when I did not get every "pile" chiseled cleanly out of the snow and days when heavy snowfall prevented me from shoveling at all, the dogs were fed and watered regularly and were in good condition upon their return. After their first winter in the bush Norma describes a day of cleaning up after the dogs during breakup that sounds very similar to what it must have been like in the spring of 1979. Also contrary to Norma's description in Chapter 67, Sid and I parted on very good terms. In fact, the night before I left, Sid came down to my cabin and begged me to stay. Both of us were in tears before that night was over. Sid certainly was forced to grow up before his time but he was up to the task. His dog team was never close to Iditarod caliber, but he was good with the dogs. It was Les that did not have the temperament for dog training and the family sled dogs all died from lead poisoning from Les's 44 some time after I left. This I learned from Les himself when I visited the homestead in April of 1979 and found all my dogs and most of their dogs missing.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great Story Ruined by Lecturing Tone, December 11, 2000
I have to agree with a previous reviewer. Although I am a dyed-in-the-wool city girl and wouldn't have it any other way, I love books such as this about lives in remote places. Norma's story was terrific, but her pontificating tone really ruined it for me. In the last chapter she goes on and on about how American parents don't spend time with their children (as she, the perfect Norma, spent with hers), how worthless life is in the Lower 48 (how would she know??), blah, blah, blah. Of course, I don't know many mothers, including myself, who would go off and work on the pipeline for an entire summer and leave her children basically unattended. I also don't think a responsible mother exposes her children to physical injury and hardship the way Norma did. I actually could not help thinking how selfish they were, considering some of the things their kids went through. From the sound of it, most of them did not receive a very good education and didn't seem to be excelling at much of anything (except for one son) as adults. Also, she goes on about people depending on the government - I wonder who picked up the tab when her husband had the serious accident that damaged his eye? It's very unlikely that they had private health insurance, so Joe Taxpayer in the lower forty-eight probably paid for that!! I sure hope they pay taxes on their land now. She really did ruin a good story with her holier-than-thou preaching. A little humility would have made this a perfect book.
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24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Incredibly well-told story; spine-tingling tale, June 10, 2003
This review is from: Arctic Homestead: The True Story of One Family's Survival and Courage in the Alaskan Wilds (Paperback)
I've been enthralled with the 'North Country' for quite some time; mainly Minnesota and Canada. After spending a summer in Northern Minnesota as a child, I felt I would make it back some day...hopefully to stay or at least build a vacation home. I'm not shy about sharing this 'dream' with close friends so it came as no surprise when a buddy of mine suggested I read ARCTIC HOMESTEAD before I became too giddy about the North. Norma and Les Cobb came together in a second marriage for both, with the added baggage of 5 children between them. In an effort to make a life for themselves and their childre, they decided to leave the Lower 48 behind and claim a homestead in Canada. Along the way, they found out only a Canadian citizen could file for homestead in Canada at that time. Undeterred, they soon determined that Alaska still had homestead provisions so they set their sights for Alaska, a home and a new life. Norma and Les find their previously unseen homestead just south of the Arctic Circle. Thus begins their story of striving to beat the homestead clock of improving the land and creating commerce within 5 years of filing the homestead papers. Along the way, they face one of their sons being accidentally shot, a derelict (and former friend) attempting to kill Les, coming face-to-face with black and grizzly bears, dealing with the Bushman (a/k/a Bigfoot), prospecting for gold, holding off ravenous wolves, and, of course, last but certainly not least, the indomitable cold and snow. Through it all, Norma and Les persevere and overcome each challenge faced. This factual novel was written by Mr. Sasser, a very gifted storyteller, the source document of which was Norma's journal. Norma maintained enough detail to allow Mr. Sasser to write an extremely complete and entertaining novel. It cannot be said that the veracity of Norma's recollections are without challenge. Ken Nelson, who Norma speaks of in Chapters 66 and 67, wrote a review of the hardback version of ARCTIC HOMESTEAD. Mr. Nelson is quite candid regarding his version of the events versus those told by Norma/Mr. Sasser. The biggest discrepancy revolves around the health of Sid's (the oldest Cobb son) dogs entrusted to Mr. Nelson when the Cobb family flew to Colorado to visit Les's ailing father. This certainly creates some uncertainty as to veracity and credence but nevertheless, this book is still a winner regardless the actual chronology of events. The Cobbs still live in their small homestead in Minook Vally, AK and even have a website promoting their big game/fishing guide services ...Anyone interested in the last true frontier should immediately pick up a copy of ARCTIC HOMESTEAD. Again, regardless your views of Norma, Les and their children, this book reads incredibly easy and totally engrossing. Highly recommended.
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