Swallowed by the Great Land: And Other Dispatches From Alaska's Frontier

Written by Seth Kantner

Narrated by Gabriel Vaughan

"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, and hunting and other aspects of subsistence living are all explored in varied yet intimate stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Mar 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9798855528367

Seth Kantner

Seth Kantner was born and raised in northern Alaska and has worked as a trapper, wilderness guide, wildlife photographer, gardening teacher, and adjunct professor. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Outside, Orion, and Smithsonian. Kantner is the author of the award-winning novel Ordinary Wolves, memoir Shopping for Porcupine, and collection of essays Swallowed by the Great Land: And Other Dispatches from Alaska’s Frontier. He has been a commercial fisherman in Kotzebue Sound for more than four decades and lives in the Northwest Arctic.

[narshkite · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A beautifully written and transporting series of dispatches that provide an account of living in the wilds of Alaska, with some up close and personal reporting on living through palpable climate change and destruction of the last primordial places. Kantner uses memoir to tell a much larger story, and does it very well.