Signals

by Kris Farmen

It is 1865, and the Russian America Company has kept Ivan Lukin busy working as a boat captain and dog teamster on the treeless Bering Sea coast at Fort St. Michael. His wife has left him, and with the return of his teenage daughter from boarding school he is thrust into a new life as a single parent. The ocean wind is cold and the monster graven into the face of the moon continues to watch his every move. Then a ship from the United States pulls into the harbor carrying two dozen Americans in blue uniforms. They've been sent to lay a telegraph wire from Siberia, through Russian America, and down to San Francisco. Or so they claim. When Lukin is assigned to serve as their guide, the Company makes one thing His job is to watch everything they do and report on their movements, just in case. Because a rumor has been spreading through Russia's North American colony, something that, if true, will change everyone's lives forever. Based around real events in Alaska's past, Signals is Book Two of the series Seasons of Want and Plenty.

Genres: Historical Fiction

206 pages, Paperback

Published April 4, 2023

About the author

I'm what is sometimes referred to as a critically acclaimed author, which is to say critics have on occasion said nice things about my books. I write both contemporary fiction and historical fiction, often with a fabulist twist, but for me there's not a lot of daylight between the past and the present. As far back as I can remember I’ve been obsessed with history, but for me it’s just the aggregate of every human life that has come and gone upon the earth. Each one of those lives is a story, and history keeps happening all around us, just as it always has. As William Faulkner famously said, the past is never dead. It's not even past.

My books generally involve Alaska and the circumpolar North, but that isn’t a hard and fast rule. In fact, I don't really write books about Alaska, I write books about people. It just so happens that most of those people either live in Alaska or are somehow connected to the Far North. I’ve used fiction as a tool to explore the “shadow society” of people of color in Alaska’s gold rush past, the world of mixed-race Russian and Native residents of Alaska during its time as a Russian colony, and the dismal history of Native boarding schools. I’ve also examined the effects of post-traumatic stress syndrome and how it changes the lives of people afflicted by it.

I live in Fairbanks, Alaska with my wife, daughter, and rescue dog. When I’m not writing, reading, or editing, I’m usually in the woods, foraging for food or just rambling around looking at birds and flowers. I’m also a surfer, though these days I really have to work and plan to get my water time. My website www.krisfarmen.com has more information about my books and my upcoming projects.

Reviews

[emma charlton · Rating 4 out of 5]

review to come!