Swallowed by the Great Land, Seth Kantner
Swallowed by the Great Land, Seth Kantner
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Swallowed by the Great Land
And Other Dispatches From Alaska's Frontier

Author: Seth Kantner

Narrator: Gabriel Vaughan

Unabridged: 6 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/26/2024


Synopsis

"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.

About Seth Kantner

Seth Kantner-trapper, fisherman, photographer, igloo-builder, and acclaimed author of Ordinary Wolves-was born in a sod igloo on the Alaskan tundra and raised on the land, wearing mukluks before they were fashionable, eating boiled caribou pelvis, and trading and living with the Inupiaq, the people native to the region. Kantner attended the University of Alaska and the University of Montana, where he received a B.A. in journalism. Kantner's writings and photographs have appeared in Outside, Prairie Schooner, Alaska, and Reader's Digest, among other anthologies and publications. His work and writing have earned him the Whiting Writers Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and the Milkweed National Fiction Prize among many others. He lives with his wife and daughter in northwest Alaska.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sammy on September 20, 2023

This is a really great look into life in the Arctic. The vignettes paint a detailed, moving picture, and very skillfully build over time towards Kantners relationship to the changing climate and threats to the Arctic. Fascinating and beautiful look into what subsistence living looks like.......more

Goodreads review by Bonnie E. on October 31, 2021

Hauntingly beautiful, with vignettes about slices of Arctic life that just cuts through, yet jarringly bleak in its descriptions of the havoc caused by corporate encroachment and climate change. The author does not romanticize the subsistence way of life, just tells story upon story of a day here, t......more

Goodreads review by Russell on November 11, 2019

These short, haiku-like essays of life above the Arctic Circle were exquisite. They bring home to a reader besotted with next day delivery how different life is elsewhere on the planet. How closer to the edge and how much more work is required to stay alive.......more

Goodreads review by Abigail on January 25, 2025

the overall style of this book may not be for me but the content surely is. Stories of the great north, connected by theme and connected by home. I really enjoyed this, and the last paragraph hit home in times like today: “Here in the Arctic, as our weather gets increasingly unpredictable, as the fut......more

Goodreads review by David on November 11, 2016

It seems everyone has a place they call home. It may not be were they currently live. But yet they hold some place as special. A place were they feel they fit. And others may never understand why on earth they choose that spot. But Seth Kanter takes the reader to a place most all of us would describ......more