Although Alaska and Hawaii have both been official states of the United States of America for fifty years, they are still looked at as remote and mysterious and slightly dangerous. Irving Warner has lived in both states, and his fiction reflects not only his deep understanding of these places but also his sincere love and respect for them. In these remarkable stories, Warner introduces his readers to these very different lands and to the very unique people who live there. In the Alaska segment of these current stories, The Lost River Trilogy, Warner focuses on the cold and loneliness of remote Alaska villages, creating stories which all take place around the Lost River road. He writes about the passions that isolation and weather can bring out in human beings, passions which are powerful and sometimes fatal. The mythos between life and afterlife is woven into each story. This elevates them to a larger individual statement, but the three together becomes a forceful vision of that enigmatic zone between life and death. In his Hawaiian Islands Trilogy, he looks at a different kind of mythos the often ethereal dimension of time. In one unforgettable story, he tells about Old Okata. He is a nine-decades-old former sugar plantation worker, a Japanese-Hawaiian who seems to be losing his bearings along the time-line that has brought him into post-plantation Hawaii¬, the world of the 21st century. Reading these two trilogies and the mediating bridge story that connects them one discovers not only two of the least populated yet most visited regions of the United States, but also how the people of these regions natives and tourists alike have learned to adapt or, in some cases, to fail to adapt to their environments. More importantly, one learns something about oneself because Warner writes of the human condition, of the deep connections we have for people throughout our country, throughout our world.
I was born in Modesto, California just before WW II, lived in Stockton California until 1957 when I moved to San Francisco with my family. There, I attended my last year of high school, graduating from Balbao High, in June 1958--and none too soon. By 1958, I was beginning to become involved with competitive tournament chess, which was the passion/foolishness of my life for the next six to seven years. I played in many tournaments, some on the highest level. A master's rating eluded me. I was what you'd call, a strong club player.
I went to Alaska in 1963/64, and spent the next 33 years there, mostly working in fisheries, fisheries science, and wildlife biology. In my early 40's, I got out of the Fish and Game business, and went into Community College teaching in Kodiak, Alaska. I took an early retirement, mostly because of health and artistic concerns at age 55, and moved to Port Angeles, Washington in 1996.
I lived on the Olympic Peninsula for 9 years, moving to the State of Hawaii in June, 2005 --mostly out of a feeling of extraordinary curiosity about the South Seas, packed about by myself since I was a young kid.
I stayed the entire two years, three months on the Big Island--along the Hamakua Coast, the "rainy" side of the island.
Because of dire financial reasons, I moved back to the mainland in October of 2007--to the Tacoma Area, Piercd County, Washington State. And that is where I write these lines. I'm actively involved in the writer's life, as always, which really began in 1973.
