Eagle Blue: A Team, a Tribe, and a High School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska [Hardcover]

Michael D'Orso (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 2006

n the tradition of Friday Night Lights, an extraordinary journey into the basketball-crazed culture of remote Arctic Alaska.

The village of Fort Yukon sits eight miles above the Arctic Circle, deep in Alaska's "bush" country. The six hundred men, women and children who live there--almost all of them Athabascan Gwich'in Natives--have little to cheer for. Their traditional Indian ways of life are rapidly vanishing in the face of a modern culture that is closing in on all sides, threatening to destroy their community and their identity. The one source of pride they can count on is their boys' high school basketball team--the Fort Yukon Eagles.

Eagle Blue follows the Eagles, winners of six regional championships in a row, through the course of an entire 28-game season, from their first day of practice in late November to the Alaska State Championship Tournament in March. With insight, frankness, and compassion, Michael D'Orso climbs into the lives of these fourteen boys, their families, and their coach, shadowing them through an Arctic winter of fifty-below-zero temperatures and near-round-the-clock darkness as the Eagles criss-cross Alaska by air, van, and snow machine in pursuit of their--and their village's--dream.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Eight miles above the Arctic Circle, there's a village with no roads leading to it, but a high school basketball tradition that lights up winter's darkness and a team of native Alaskan boys who know "no quit." D'Orso (coauthor of Like No Other Time with Tom Daschle) follows the Fort Yukon Eagles through their 2005 season to the state championship, shifting between a mesmerizing narrative and the thoughts of the players, their coach and their fans. What emerges is more than a sports story; it's a striking portrait of a community consisting of a traditional culture bombarded with modernity, where alcoholism, domestic violence and school dropout rates run wild. One player compares Fort Yukon to a bucket of crabs: "If one crab gets a claw-hold on the edge... and starts to pull itself out, the others will reach up and grab it and pull it back down." Among D'Orso's unusual characters are the woman who built a public library in her home, the families who adopt abandoned children, and, of course, the boys for whom "hard" has an entirely different meaning (e.g., regularly trudging through "icy darkness" to board flights to Fairbanks for games). With a ghostlike presence, D'Orso lends a voice to a place that deserves to be known. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Everything in Alaska's bush is tough, from earning a living to surviving the elements. One thing that helps citizens in the isolated, mostly Native American bush communities cope with the long winters is high-school basketball. Fort Yukon High School had 32 students enrolled in 2004, and of those, 14 boys and 7 girls were on the respective basketball teams. The boys program is one of the most successful in the state: the preceding eight seasons, they won regional titles and most recently advanced to the finals before losing. With the OK of school officials and the players, D'Orso imbedded himself with the team for the 2004-05 season. He lived in a small Fort Yukon cabin, attended all the practices and games, and tried to learn as much as possible about the culture of the town in which the players live. The result is a thoroughly fascinating mix of sports and cultural anthropology. The basketball narrative is fascinating as D'Orso examines the team dynamic, a la John Feinstein, but the real beauty of the book emerges in the contextual portrait of life in a small bush town where the traditions of hunting, trapping, and fishing are slowly eroded by the culture of snowmobiles, video games, and television. An inspiring, sometimes disturbing portrait of a culture in crisis. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (March 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582346232
• ISBN-13: 978-1582346236
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #135,990 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mike D'Orso's work includes 16 books, eight of which have been bestsellers, three of which have been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book is OCEANA:Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them, written with actor/activist Ted Danson

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eagle Blue ... it soars., February 26, 2006

By 

Victor (Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eagle Blue: A Team, a Tribe, and a High School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska (Hardcover)

Every man or woman who has been privileged to bounce a basketball in earnest, and every person who has been privileged to cheer their efforts, should appreciate this vivid and edgy tale of what a love of sport can mean -- especially to players whose moments away from the court are so steeped in peril.

D'Orso has defined the razor's edge where humanity's playing fields and emotional fields intersect. And he's offering a front-row seat. Grab a ticket, you won't regret it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 4.5 stars... outstanding tale of HS basketball and the impact on its Alaska community, July 8, 2006

By 

Paul Allaer (Cincinnati) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eagle Blue: A Team, a Tribe, and a High School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska (Hardcover)

There are a lot of books out there on high school sports and its impact on their community (the mid-90s "Friday Night Lights" remaining a prime example of HS football and its impact on a far-flung Texas community).

"Eagle Blue" (323 pages) chronicles the 2004-05 season of the Fort Yukon HS basketball team. The previous year, the team made it to the 1A state final (the small schools, with 50 or lesser HS students). The team looks to be loaded and ready to make another run at the state title. The best part of the book is the first half, in which author Michael D'Orso paints the main characters and the environment in which they live. There is coach Dave, and what brought him to live in this far away community, and the challenges he goes through in managing the team. Can you imagine a HS team have to fly to its away games? There is Matt, the senior star of the team, and the temptations he goes through. There is Doc, the principal of the school understanding so well how much the basketball program matters to the kids AND the community.

The second half of the book is less riveting, as it mostly recounts the games in which the team makes it to the State games for a record 7th year in a row. The end may surprise you, as it did me. Separate from the basketball aspects of the book, the author goes into detail how many challenges these far remote Alaska communities go through, dealing with alcoholism, drug-addiction, and the like.

This book was a page-turner for me from the beginning. I happen to love HS sports myself (although here in Cincinnati HS football remains king), but the way which D'Osro was able to paint the Fort Yukon community and its love-affair with (and dependence on) its HS basketball team is outstanding. Highly recommended!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You need to read this book, April 26, 2006

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Roger Johnson "siksikakoan" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eagle Blue: A Team, a Tribe, and a High School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska (Hardcover)

What a season. I started this book on first day of vacation and read it before going to sleep at night and got up early to read before my family awoke.

My family is from the Blackfeet Reservation and I couldn't help but think I was reading about some of my own relations ~{;0

Before I read this book, I didn't know much about this tribe, area or concerns (such as ANWAR). Now that I have, I have taken an interest in what matters to them. For instance, there was a show on public television about the Gwi'ichan and how (ANWAR would affect them) that was on during the same time as the NBA playoffs this last weekend. I surfed to that show during commercial break and never went back to the game. I hope to invest more time and energy in the ANWAR issue because of this book.

The author did a great job of making the story about the boys and the people and not about him.

Roger