Lost and Found in Alaska

Joel Rudinger takes us to Alaska when statehood was brand new, its frontier breathtaking--and dangerous. His is a physical and cultural journey where life, without exaggeration, is lived on the edge.

Growing up middle class in Ohio, Rudinger wills himself towards the extraordinary. First, with going to Alaska--of all places--for graduate school. Then taking on jobs for which he had no training or visible aptitude. Later he's hitchhiking the Alcan Highway with a lover, pushing himself repeatedly to physical and spiritual limits.

Rudinger tells his story in striking first-person detail. Events six decades old are told as though they happened just last summer, raw, not romanticized. Having left Ohio in 1960 a man-child, he returns four years later deeply experienced in all the ways of the world.

"Lost and Found in Alaska" is a must-read. For its history. For its exquisite capturing of frontier life. For the sheer courage of its author.

~Kurt Landefeld, author of Jack's Memoirs: Off the Road