In the course of a two-year odyssey ...Kizzia visited numerous native settlements, interviewed leaders and followers, and wrote the feature articles that make up this charming, informative book...Kizzia writes a clear, unobtrusive prose that crystallizes in memorable images.--Washington Post. A boatful of native Alaskans slapping downriver through the chop on their way to the biggest softball game of the season. A hunter singing the old songs for hunting luck, as he snowmobiles onto the ice with his rifle. Such contrasts--Eskimo and outsider, ancient and modern--run through Tom Kizzia's chronicle of travels in the Alaska bush in search of 'ancestral landscapes.'--Smithsonian. Kizzia writes with a quiet compassion that brings the people and their hard land clearly into focus.--Boston Globe. Kizzia ...is a thoughtful and lyrical writer who manages to be sensitive without veering into sentimentality...[He] joined Eskimos and Athabaskan Indians in steambaths and softball games. He visited their homes and their Russian Orthodox churches and their fishing camps. He even went on a ruthless whale hunt with two young Eskimos, a skiff and a .22-caliber rifle. A careful and sympathetic observer.--Philadelphia Inquirer. Tom Kizzia is a journalist at the Anchorage Daily News.