At 26, reeling from a bitter divorce, Kristin Knight agreed to spend a winter in Alaska, living in a remote cabin and caring for a team of sled dogs. Despite the darkness, penetrating cold and backbreaking difficulties, she fell in love: with the place, the dogs, her neighbors and eventually with Andy, a gentle man who'd hoped to escape his own heartbreak. A decade later, Kristin and Andy are dog mushers and kennel owners, and Kristin chronicles their journey in her memoir, This Much Country.
Life in Alaska is full of challenges, and that goes double for novice mushers training for 1,000-mile races such as the Iditarod or the Yukon Quest, both of which Kristin has completed. She describes the logistics of training and the pure grit required to conquer each mile of the race trail. Despite (or because of) the difficulties, she gets hooked on mushing: "It was a wonder to feel so vulnerable and so electrically alive." She doesn't gloss over the tough parts of Alaskan life: isolation, no running water, almost total darkness in wintertime. But her journalist's eye for detail is strongest when she writes about racing itself and describes the personalities of her beloved dogs. Her descriptions of the wide, wild country will captivate readers, even those who are not wilderness-inclined. "We found a light at the end of the road that was ours," she writes. That northern light shines brightly, drawing readers toward the rugged landscape that has become her home. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams