Koviashuvik: Making a Home in the Brooks Range [Paperback]

Sam Wright (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1997

On a slope above a mountain lake in Alaska’s Brooks Range, Sam and Billie Wright built a twelve-by-twelve-foot log cabin with hand tools and named it Koviashuvik—an Eskimo word meaning "living in the present moment with quiet joy and happiness." Sam’s account of the twenty years they spent there is both a tale of wilderness survival and an inspiring meditation on the natural world and humanity’s relationship to it.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"His powerful memoir . . . begins with him confronting a bear that’s trying to break into his house at four in the morning and goes on to cover natural Arctic events . . . Wright smoothly combines science and philosophy in this graceful work, attuned to the physical and spiritual mysteries of nature."—Kirkus Reviews "The Eskimo concept of koviashuvik resonates at the core of Wright’s thinking and of this book . . . The Eskimos, like the Wrights, understood that to experience koviashuvik one must live in harmony with nature, not separately and apart from it."—Bloomsbury Review "This is the best book about Alaska written this decade, possibly this half-century."—Booklist

About the Author

Sam Wright now lives in Young, Arizona.

Product Details

• Paperback: 214 pages
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press (July 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816517959
• ISBN-13: 978-0816517954
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,761,008 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Just plain annoying, January 10, 2004

By 

Chukchiboy (Anchorage, AK United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Koviashuvik: Making a Home in the Brooks Range (Paperback)

I didn't like this book at all.

The prose, as noted in other reviews here, is weird -- like an endless entry in a Bad Hemingway Contest.

There's relatively little sense of what it's like, day by day, to live a subsistence lifestyle in the Brooks Range.

Wright seems to take the attitude that he's morally and intellectually superior to people who don't live as he does -- people still swimming in the mainstream of society.

And, it's worth noting, his lifestyle in the Brooks Range is altogether dependent on products from the material culture he professes to disdain. As he mentions at one point, the necessities are a gun, a knife, and an ax. Plus (as he doesn't mention) a Bush plane to bring in the mail and supplies, and check up on him and his wife from time to time.

But, in the end, I think it's his faux-Hemingway prose that offends me most. Here's my own nomination for a passage that is really stupid, yes, it is, it is really stupid:

"It is a disturbing thing not to know. When you want to know it is disturbing not to know. Even though there are some things we do not want to know, like what our children taste like boiled."

Stan Jones
Anchorage, Alaska

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Awesome cover, too much vacuous philosophy..., August 6, 2001

By 

Andrew Bruske "Andrew Bruske" (Seoul, Korea) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Koviashuvik: Making a Home in the Brooks Range (Paperback)

I was hoping to find out more about life in the Brooks Range. Be warned! This is not a travelogue, or account of life in the Brooks Range, at least not more than a superficial account. This book is chock full, full to overflowing, with sentences of the following ilk: "It was a strange experience to visit the United States when you are living in the United States but not really in the United States, because people in America did not think of us as really being in the United States. But we are. Yes, we really are."

That was taken from a random page. I could have given a better example if my purpose in writing this were anything greater, but it is not. No. It is not. Oops, I'm talking like the author. I get it, of course, but it becomes too much.

Other gripes: Extended periods of time spent in the U.S. (as it were) and Britain described.

This book is Sam Wright's personal meditation. Some people will be interested in that. I was looking for information on the Brooks Range, and while some is given, the quantity is quite small considering a 200+ page book.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Journey through time, November 22, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Koviashuvik: Making a Home in the Brooks Range (Paperback)

Sam Wright takes us to Kovishutok and his Koviashuvik through a prose that at first was halting in its simplicity. As one reads on, as it is clear one reviewer did not, the lithe of the language carries the story telling of native speach and perceptions. I have lived through this evolution of myths and new myths, but seldom have I read an odessy that contains insight, pathos, empathy, and as an aside, a love story with Sam's wife Billie. The Brooks range and Alaska come alive, are described in brillant detail, and historicaly chronicalized. I am a little closer to Koviashuvik in my own life for having read this book.