After a childhood spent shuttling between her Great Alaskan Dad in isolated Anchorage and her "Great American Instant Coffee Single Mom" in genteel Baltimore, Leigh Newman finds that her compass Still Points North. She shares her journey in a memoir filled with tales of surviving bears and flooded tents, as well as a mother whose insecurities force Leigh to develop a sense of self-sufficiency in the Lower 48 as well.
Despite the physical and emotional strife of her childhood, Newman obviously loves her parents. Her early years included learning survival skills from the caribou-hunting, salmon-fishing father she adored, and readers will hold their breath as Leigh and her dad submerge in icy waters, both literal and metaphorical, during an ill-fated fishing trip or establishing relationships with her new stepfamily. He taught her to pretend she was on a deserted island and had to figure out how to take care of herself, a principle she applied throughout her life.
When her mother ended her marriage and drove cross-country to her hometown of Baltimore, she took eight-year-old Leigh, introducing her daughter to crustless sandwiches and the National Gallery of Art. Manifesting the emotional effects of her own childhood insecurities, her mother spent money carelessly and worked long hours at a low-paying job; Leigh frequently had to fend for herself. After college, Newman became a globe-traveling journalist, though her search for a self-identity still drew on her eclectic roots. Newman is an inspiration--eventually embracing all of the quirky facets of her parents to create a family for herself. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller, Book Passage, San Francisco