Swallowed by the Great Land

And Other Dispatches from Alaska’s Frontier

"Seth Kantner illuminates an Alaska most of us will never know." -Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever

When Seth Kantner's Ordinary Wolves was published, it was a literary revelation of sorts. In a raw, stylized voice, it told the story of a white boy growing up with homesteading parents in Arctic Alaska and trying to reconcile his largely subsistence and Native-style upbringing with the expectations and realities tied to his race. It hit numerous bestseller lists, was critically acclaimed, and won a number of awards.

Seth's nonfiction second book, the memoir Shopping for Porcupine, was even more compelling for many-the same raw details of a homesteading upbringing, but intensely personal. Now, in Swallowed by the Great Land, he once again brings us into his lyrical wilderness existence.

Swallowed by the Great Land features slice-of-life essays that further reveal the duality in the author's own life today, and also in the village and community that he inhabits-a mosaic of all life on the tundra. Unique characters, village life, wilderness and the larger landscape, a warming Arctic, hunting, and other aspects of subsistence living are all explored in varied yet intimate stories.

©2015 Seth Kantner (P)2024 Tantor