What do you think?
Rate this book
Outside Passage: A Memoir of an Alaskan Childhood
1. The first chapter of Outside Passage is a flash forward, yet chronologically, the story really begins with Chapter 2. Why do you think the author chose this narrative device? Is it effective? 2. In recounting her childhood, how does the narrator suggest the importance of her memories of her father, as few and hazy as they might have been? 3. During her two year stay in the San Francisco orphanage, the young Billie finds ways of extracting emotional sustenance from this difficult situation. What are some of these ways? How does this same ability to find the positive within hard circumstances impact on her adjustment to life after the orphanage? 4. In some ways the orphanage provides the two young girls in Outside Passage with cultural advantages, associations and learning opportunities not previously available to them. Today the very word 'orphanage' causes a shudder; yet we hear of the many failings of the foster care system which replaced them. How might the author and her sister have fared better or worse if they had existed in today's system? 5. In desperation, Rose chose to leave her two daughters in San Francisco and return alone to Alaska. Why do you think she decided to leave her children in an orphanage rather than taking them with her? Was this the best decision for herself? For her children? 6. Reunited with her girls, Rose seems like a permissive parent, imposing 'no rules,' as Billie observes. How would you explain this is it evidence of a lack of caring; a guilty response to having abandoned them in the orphanage; does it represent a hope that this freedom might provide a healing process for the girls? 7. Billie expresses positive feelings about the men who frequent her mother's roadhouse. What is the basis for her feelings and do you think they reflect the real nature of these men or a child's idealization? 8. Rose's secrecy about her emotional and sexual life impacts on the life of the narrator increasingly as she reaches puberty. How does Rose's behavior and attitudes reflect the mores of that period in American life? In what ways might her story and that of her daughters been different had they lived in a contemporary setting? 9. Many reviewers have described the writing style in Outside Passage as 'understated.' Does this style work to good effect in telling the story? How so? 10. Two incidents in the book might be seen as turning points in the narrator's life. One is the scene in which she witnesses the malamute shot by the chief of police, the other occurs some years later when she is struck by the beauty of the sun rising over the frozen sea. In what ways are these moments particularly meaningful in her emotional development? 11. The New York Times reviewer observed that '...Scully's imagination, the tool with which she probes her mother's life, is a moral imagination, whose root is forgiveness...' Do you agree? In what way is this 'forgiveness' evident? 12. In another review ( The Cleveland Plain Dealer ) the statement appears that in Outside Passage , the 'setting and voice ... perfectly mesh.' What do you understand this to mean? 13. The author was formerly editor of Modern Photography Magazine and has written extensively about the art of photography. Some readers and reviewers have commented on the photographic, i.e. strongly visual, nature of her writing. Do you see evidences of this quality and what is the ultimate result in the effectiveness of the story being told? 14. While Outside Passage is, in effect, a 'coming-of-age' story, it is set against the background of two major events in the 20th Century history of this The Great Depression and The Second World War. What sense of these events does the reader glean as observed through the eyes of a young girl? 15. In Time Magazine , a writer described Outside Passage as 'a simple reminder of the immense power of a child's love, which can last through terrible neglect,' while, as mentioned above, the New York Times reviewer found it 'rooted in forgiveness.' Are there other emotions and feelings that can be inferred about the narrator's attitude towards her mother?
236 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
5 people are currently reading
155 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
November 23, 2016
This memoir begins with the author's note:
This story is true to the best of my memory. But memory is flawed and colored by emotion and events of the intervening years. Therefore, there may be some who might remember particular details, characters and events differently.
This statement should preface all memoirs, but it doesn't! This author has the humility and true understanding to begin with this thought.
The author's childhood memories have a special honesty and clarity. I highly appreciate the sections focusing on her childhood and the information she provides concerning her mother's early life. She clearly states she doesn't understand why decisions were made; as a child, she was not part of the decision process. What shines through is her perception of the events. I trust these memories. They express her emotions, how she thought and felt as a child. Sometimes what is related is sad, sometimes poignant and sometimes simply fun. Look what happened when Julia and her sister decided to help their mother:
Once we decide to scrub the kitchen floor. We found a bucket and two bars of laundry soap under the sink. We poured some water on the floor and, in the interest of neatness, stripped down to our underpants. As we were sloshing the soap around, we discovered that, with a little maneuvering, and with our knees pulled up to our chins, we could sit on a bar of soap and, taking turns giving each other a push, slide halfway across the floor. When we tired of that, we experimented with pouring more water on the floor, wedging the laundry bars under our bellies and "swimming" from one end of the kitchen to the other. My mother came home to find us soaked and muddy and half naked and the kitchen a semi-flooded disaster.
She never punished us, never hit us or raised her voice. She could laugh in the most hopeless situations. And she was capable of a cold and unbending resolve. (page 23)
What is wonderful is that Julia's mother, sister, father and others are viewed from the experiences she remembers as a child. The honesty is evident, while at the same time one is very aware that there are other ways of judging the events. The lives of her mother and these two girls, who lost their father at the ages of eleven and thirteen respectively, were not easy. They live in San Francisco, Seattle, Nome, Fairbanks, sometimes in "orphanages" where they were deposited without really knowing why or for how long. And then their mother collected them, and they were off to another place. The childhood memories of Alaska take place during the early 1940s while the war was raging, when the fear was that the Japanese would attack even Nome. But the story is not historical; it is about personal experiences.
My problem with the book is when I consider what is the message the author is trying to impart? I know she is stressing the importance of acknowledging the past and the very value of our memories. Be they "real" or "twisted"; they are all we have! Nevertheless as the author grows into adulthood the book seems more ponderous. I know she is emphasizing that we must remember, but people are all different and this is not a choice for all of us. The author's own mother's fate is something she wants to escape. She simply has to leave Alaska, but what teenager ever wants to follow in their parents' footsteps?! The author does acknowledge her mother's strength. I am not quite sure if the message that we must analyze and look at our memories is a universal solution for all. Both the author's mother and her sister approach their memories completely differently. Perhaps that is what was best for them, but not for the author. What works for one does not necessarily work for another. Somehow the clarity that infuses the first sections of the book gets lost in the latter sections. In the first we see with the author what she saw and felt and experienced. In the latter sections she is groping and looking for a philosophical meaning that perhaps cannot be found. Maybe this is what growing up is all about?! I do not know. I was left floundering.
The writing is excellent, particularly in the first half. Early memories of life, growing up in Alaska and in San Francisco, shine.
This story is true to the best of my memory. But memory is flawed and colored by emotion and events of the intervening years. Therefore, there may be some who might remember particular details, characters and events differently.
This statement should preface all memoirs, but it doesn't! This author has the humility and true understanding to begin with this thought.
The author's childhood memories have a special honesty and clarity. I highly appreciate the sections focusing on her childhood and the information she provides concerning her mother's early life. She clearly states she doesn't understand why decisions were made; as a child, she was not part of the decision process. What shines through is her perception of the events. I trust these memories. They express her emotions, how she thought and felt as a child. Sometimes what is related is sad, sometimes poignant and sometimes simply fun. Look what happened when Julia and her sister decided to help their mother:
Once we decide to scrub the kitchen floor. We found a bucket and two bars of laundry soap under the sink. We poured some water on the floor and, in the interest of neatness, stripped down to our underpants. As we were sloshing the soap around, we discovered that, with a little maneuvering, and with our knees pulled up to our chins, we could sit on a bar of soap and, taking turns giving each other a push, slide halfway across the floor. When we tired of that, we experimented with pouring more water on the floor, wedging the laundry bars under our bellies and "swimming" from one end of the kitchen to the other. My mother came home to find us soaked and muddy and half naked and the kitchen a semi-flooded disaster.
She never punished us, never hit us or raised her voice. She could laugh in the most hopeless situations. And she was capable of a cold and unbending resolve. (page 23)
What is wonderful is that Julia's mother, sister, father and others are viewed from the experiences she remembers as a child. The honesty is evident, while at the same time one is very aware that there are other ways of judging the events. The lives of her mother and these two girls, who lost their father at the ages of eleven and thirteen respectively, were not easy. They live in San Francisco, Seattle, Nome, Fairbanks, sometimes in "orphanages" where they were deposited without really knowing why or for how long. And then their mother collected them, and they were off to another place. The childhood memories of Alaska take place during the early 1940s while the war was raging, when the fear was that the Japanese would attack even Nome. But the story is not historical; it is about personal experiences.
My problem with the book is when I consider what is the message the author is trying to impart? I know she is stressing the importance of acknowledging the past and the very value of our memories. Be they "real" or "twisted"; they are all we have! Nevertheless as the author grows into adulthood the book seems more ponderous. I know she is emphasizing that we must remember, but people are all different and this is not a choice for all of us. The author's own mother's fate is something she wants to escape. She simply has to leave Alaska, but what teenager ever wants to follow in their parents' footsteps?! The author does acknowledge her mother's strength. I am not quite sure if the message that we must analyze and look at our memories is a universal solution for all. Both the author's mother and her sister approach their memories completely differently. Perhaps that is what was best for them, but not for the author. What works for one does not necessarily work for another. Somehow the clarity that infuses the first sections of the book gets lost in the latter sections. In the first we see with the author what she saw and felt and experienced. In the latter sections she is groping and looking for a philosophical meaning that perhaps cannot be found. Maybe this is what growing up is all about?! I do not know. I was left floundering.
The writing is excellent, particularly in the first half. Early memories of life, growing up in Alaska and in San Francisco, shine.
August 14, 2025
“Perhaps I have simply learned too well my mother’s stoicism, her readiness to put aside dreams for what is present, possible, tangible. Dreams are fragile, evaporating easily. More important, they can hurt you, their loss leaving you weakened and helpless.” -213
“I begin to discern, vaguely, tentatively, that somewhere exists a world where the accepted language is… a language of ideas and, even, of feelings.” -212
These quotes exhibit what especially stood out to me in this book: the way stoicism is incredibly suffocating to children. Children need space to learn emotions, and to experience joy and wonder, within the safety of a family. The author discovers in her teenage years that she has missed out on much of the wonder and hope of life, simply by normalizing everything her mother dragged them through.
This was heartbreaking to read as a new mom: to see the direct consequences on Julia and her sister unfold while their mother provided the bare minimum (or less) as a parent. She was emotionally unavailable to her daughters— always caught up in her own struggles and desires and never considering how her selfishness affected the girls.
The author’s writing is truly genius— the way she uniquely captures emotion and heartache without ever saying it directly. Her sparse prose also really captures the worldview of a child. The writing was truly the best part! I gave it three stars simply because the book was so heartbreaking to read. It reads almost as a conversation in a therapist’s office as the author slowly unpacks an incredibly traumatic and disturbing childhood.
“I begin to discern, vaguely, tentatively, that somewhere exists a world where the accepted language is… a language of ideas and, even, of feelings.” -212
These quotes exhibit what especially stood out to me in this book: the way stoicism is incredibly suffocating to children. Children need space to learn emotions, and to experience joy and wonder, within the safety of a family. The author discovers in her teenage years that she has missed out on much of the wonder and hope of life, simply by normalizing everything her mother dragged them through.
This was heartbreaking to read as a new mom: to see the direct consequences on Julia and her sister unfold while their mother provided the bare minimum (or less) as a parent. She was emotionally unavailable to her daughters— always caught up in her own struggles and desires and never considering how her selfishness affected the girls.
The author’s writing is truly genius— the way she uniquely captures emotion and heartache without ever saying it directly. Her sparse prose also really captures the worldview of a child. The writing was truly the best part! I gave it three stars simply because the book was so heartbreaking to read. It reads almost as a conversation in a therapist’s office as the author slowly unpacks an incredibly traumatic and disturbing childhood.
February 12, 2018
I read this memoir while doing research for a new project and really enjoyed it. Great details about two sisters struggling to grow up in the bitter extremes of Nome, Alaska, made all the more challenging by a loving but completely unpredictable mother.
June 12, 2021
Ghost Memories
Julia Scully led a peripatetic childhood, dragged along by her mother who bounced around between San Francisco, Nome, Alaska, Seattle and Taylor Creek, Alaska – a remote frontier outpost providing rudimentary food and shelter to an itinerant group of gold seekers. But, for Scully, the seemingly endless moving comprised a bare slice of her all too quixotic youth. If her adolescent and teenage years were only influenced by her mother’s rambling about from one home to another, this would have been a very different, far less painful memoir.
Scully begins her memoir in Nome right before the onset of World War II. This was a vastly different Nome than the one famed today as the Iditarod’s destination point. Back then, as Scully remembers it, Nome was a barren outpost in the middle of nowhere. The first two sentences of her book aptly define its remoteness: “There wasn’t a single tree in Nome. There wasn’t a road that connected it to any other village or town.” In fact, her opening description of Nome pretty much sets the tone for the rest of her book – bleak despondency.
The uplifting moments in the Outside Passage are few and far-between. Her mother, constantly in search of a job, or better yet, entrepreneurial gold strike that can lift her out of poverty, is a tight-lipped, laconic, embittered woman, who tells her children where they’ll be moving at the very last minute. In a poignant, heart-wrenching scene, while living in San Francisco, Scully describes how her mother takes her and her sister on an outing to a new place. Often, weekend jaunts meant a streetcar trip to Golden Gate Park or the amusement park at the beach. On this weekend they visited a place without rides or attractions. Her mother left them there without any explanation – it was an orphanage where she and Lillian thought they’d spend the rest of their childhood before being shuttled off to another, more dystopian orphanage in Seattle.
Their release from that nightmarish, Dickens’ inspired asylum was emblematic of her mother’s curious behavior. Neither she nor her sister knew they were being released from the orphanage when their aunt mysteriously appeared and deposits them upon a ship headed for who- knows-where. All the two young girls know is that they are placed in a cabin, food is delivered to them and times passes in a hazy, nauseous fog till they finally arrive in Dutch Harbor where their mother is waiting for them. When she finally greets them and places them on a plane headed for Taylor Creek she behaves as if nothing odd has transpired over the last several years; she provides no explanation for why she had abandoned them for so long or why they were now headed toward this remote outpost other than telling them “‘You’re going to meet someone.’”
It’s little wonder then that Scully’s entire world view is shaded by this pervasive feeling that life’s outcomes are determined not by your own efforts, anything you might remotely control, but by forces beyond your command. This sensibility translates into a ubiquitous wave of impotence. For someone like Scully it felt like her life was constantly buffeted by whatever prevailing winds happened to be blowing her direction. All of this helped to create an environment within which Scully felt abandoned – there was no one she could turn to – not even herself. Toward the end of her memoir, just before Lillian marries, she explicitly conveys this loss when she discovers that that her sister does not remember any of their childhood events. She does not remember the orphanages, or the tortuous, ocean voyages, not even the bleak periods of isolation in Taylor Creek.
“And so I realize that I was alone. For if she remembers none of it, then, in a way, she wasn’t really there, and so there’s no one, no one in this whole world, who can tell me if it’s true, no one who can tell me if I remember things the way they really happened.” This epiphany drives home the point for her that she cannot even rely upon her own memory of what she believes has passed. The thin line between reality and illusion, if not shattered, has to some degree, been denigrated to an educated guess.
What she’s left with are not valid recollections of her past, but ghost memories, fleeting images that may or may not be true, but in the end, are the only ones she can claim her own.
Originally published in the Anchorage Press on January 16, 2017
Julia Scully led a peripatetic childhood, dragged along by her mother who bounced around between San Francisco, Nome, Alaska, Seattle and Taylor Creek, Alaska – a remote frontier outpost providing rudimentary food and shelter to an itinerant group of gold seekers. But, for Scully, the seemingly endless moving comprised a bare slice of her all too quixotic youth. If her adolescent and teenage years were only influenced by her mother’s rambling about from one home to another, this would have been a very different, far less painful memoir.
Scully begins her memoir in Nome right before the onset of World War II. This was a vastly different Nome than the one famed today as the Iditarod’s destination point. Back then, as Scully remembers it, Nome was a barren outpost in the middle of nowhere. The first two sentences of her book aptly define its remoteness: “There wasn’t a single tree in Nome. There wasn’t a road that connected it to any other village or town.” In fact, her opening description of Nome pretty much sets the tone for the rest of her book – bleak despondency.
The uplifting moments in the Outside Passage are few and far-between. Her mother, constantly in search of a job, or better yet, entrepreneurial gold strike that can lift her out of poverty, is a tight-lipped, laconic, embittered woman, who tells her children where they’ll be moving at the very last minute. In a poignant, heart-wrenching scene, while living in San Francisco, Scully describes how her mother takes her and her sister on an outing to a new place. Often, weekend jaunts meant a streetcar trip to Golden Gate Park or the amusement park at the beach. On this weekend they visited a place without rides or attractions. Her mother left them there without any explanation – it was an orphanage where she and Lillian thought they’d spend the rest of their childhood before being shuttled off to another, more dystopian orphanage in Seattle.
Their release from that nightmarish, Dickens’ inspired asylum was emblematic of her mother’s curious behavior. Neither she nor her sister knew they were being released from the orphanage when their aunt mysteriously appeared and deposits them upon a ship headed for who- knows-where. All the two young girls know is that they are placed in a cabin, food is delivered to them and times passes in a hazy, nauseous fog till they finally arrive in Dutch Harbor where their mother is waiting for them. When she finally greets them and places them on a plane headed for Taylor Creek she behaves as if nothing odd has transpired over the last several years; she provides no explanation for why she had abandoned them for so long or why they were now headed toward this remote outpost other than telling them “‘You’re going to meet someone.’”
It’s little wonder then that Scully’s entire world view is shaded by this pervasive feeling that life’s outcomes are determined not by your own efforts, anything you might remotely control, but by forces beyond your command. This sensibility translates into a ubiquitous wave of impotence. For someone like Scully it felt like her life was constantly buffeted by whatever prevailing winds happened to be blowing her direction. All of this helped to create an environment within which Scully felt abandoned – there was no one she could turn to – not even herself. Toward the end of her memoir, just before Lillian marries, she explicitly conveys this loss when she discovers that that her sister does not remember any of their childhood events. She does not remember the orphanages, or the tortuous, ocean voyages, not even the bleak periods of isolation in Taylor Creek.
“And so I realize that I was alone. For if she remembers none of it, then, in a way, she wasn’t really there, and so there’s no one, no one in this whole world, who can tell me if it’s true, no one who can tell me if I remember things the way they really happened.” This epiphany drives home the point for her that she cannot even rely upon her own memory of what she believes has passed. The thin line between reality and illusion, if not shattered, has to some degree, been denigrated to an educated guess.
What she’s left with are not valid recollections of her past, but ghost memories, fleeting images that may or may not be true, but in the end, are the only ones she can claim her own.
Originally published in the Anchorage Press on January 16, 2017
July 15, 2008
Thoughtfully written, but not much learned. Some scenes and characters were memorably created, like skating on bars of soap in the apartment kitchen, and Cappy, the bartender in Nome who waited, every night, to turn on the light at the last possible moment of daylight. When I researched her later life - editor of Modern Photography magazine, if I remember correctly - I couldn't reconcile her life choices to her early Alaskan experiences. As the book was ending, she mentioned her sister's somewhat sad outcome, but I was never sure if she saw her mother again. I would have liked to have had a mention of her later relationship with her mother, if there was one, and whether or not she was able to reconcile the two distinct periods of her life.
October 16, 2021
I really, really enjoyed this book. The author really took me into her mind as a child and a young person and created such a sense of place. Her other great skill was her portraits of people, often mysteriously or partially incomplete...just as a child's view of people often is. This is not a riveting adventure read about Alaska...and yet I found myself wanting to read on and on. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I loved it.
August 26, 2022
Sad autobiography about being raised by a single immigrant mom, during tough economic times. The book ends with the hope of college changing her life, but there is no clear path to a joyful future. The reader of the book may be a big part of the sad tone. Not much is learned about Alaska, except that it is bleak.
August 15, 2018
It was a quick read, and fun to read in Alaska, though I was in Southeast Alaska, no where near Nome. I enjoyed it, particularly all the Jewish stuff. I did want to know more about her life after she left, though.
September 10, 2023
I found this book in the local library after reading Ms Scully’s obit in the NYTimes - she died at age 94 this past July - and becoming curious. (I also checked out the Disfarmer book of photographs - amazing I might add and also should be available in many libraries.). I was actually charmed by her recollections - a memoir of childhood memories - despite the painful times, and I appreciated her later chapters as she tried to make some sense of it all. Kudos to Ms Scully for her professional success and accomplishments, given all the unpredictability and loss of her younger, pre-college years. The memoir did make me curious to know of her mother’s later life as well as that of her only sister who died in 2013, neither of whom were compelling to me but nonetheless they were crucial parts of the story, even in their opacity. I recommend this book to those who especially enjoy memoir. A quick accessible read, and a story not easily forgotten.
January 31, 2023
Outside Passage by Julia Scully is not what I expected. The book is a memoir of Scully’s teenage years in Alaska. The book does not start with the author already in Alaska; she spends time in California first.
The book is poignant and difficult to read at times. For example, the reason they moved to Nome, Alaska, was that her father committed suicide. He did this because they were going to amputate his other leg. Scully and her sister had to stay in an orphanage for a while because their mother needed a job.
I visited Alaska and parts of the Yukon for two weeks in 2022, so I thought this would be a great book. It is older than I expected, and the time frame is the early 1940s. I can’t relate to being a teenage girl, but the themes of loneliness resonate with me.
I can’t say I enjoyed the book, but I didn’t hate it either. Thanks for reading my review, and see you next time.
The book is poignant and difficult to read at times. For example, the reason they moved to Nome, Alaska, was that her father committed suicide. He did this because they were going to amputate his other leg. Scully and her sister had to stay in an orphanage for a while because their mother needed a job.
I visited Alaska and parts of the Yukon for two weeks in 2022, so I thought this would be a great book. It is older than I expected, and the time frame is the early 1940s. I can’t relate to being a teenage girl, but the themes of loneliness resonate with me.
I can’t say I enjoyed the book, but I didn’t hate it either. Thanks for reading my review, and see you next time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 27, 2021
I happened to find this book at the library and what a great find it was. The memoir tells the story of a young girl who along with her sister is raised by a widowed immigrant mother trying to survive in depression America. Their story includes a stint in two orphanages while the mother is trying to get a foothold in Alaska, then moves on to their upbringing in Alaska. It's completely unlike anything I've ever read, giving me a perspective on a time and place that I no idea of. And the writing is beautiful.
October 27, 2021
For me, this was a good listen but, I lived in Anchorage and Juneau and I found the places she spoke of reminiscent of my years in Alaska. The book is read rather flatly, not unlike how so many Native Alaskans sound. The story is interesting and somewhat sad. The main character does appear to be breaking free at the end, like water breaking through ice (spring break-up). That being said, many people are very happy living in places like Nome. I would love to visit there, in the summer.
January 4, 2024
A remarkable account of life in Alaska before and during the second world war.
Julia was born in San Francisco, then lived for a while in Seattle, then Nome, and Taylors Creek on The Kougarok River, Seward Peninsula, an extremely remote place in those days when the only way to travel there was by bush plane, or dog sled.
Now there's a road, the Kougarok Road, from Nome to Taylors.
Highly recommended.
Julia was born in San Francisco, then lived for a while in Seattle, then Nome, and Taylors Creek on The Kougarok River, Seward Peninsula, an extremely remote place in those days when the only way to travel there was by bush plane, or dog sled.
Now there's a road, the Kougarok Road, from Nome to Taylors.
Highly recommended.
August 4, 2017
A memoir of growing up in Nome Alaska when it was the wild frontier. Scully and her sister were left in orphanages on the west coast by their mother while she tried to secure work in Alaska. When they were finally taken to live with their mother she was working as a cook in a remote mining camp. An amazing account of growing up in uncommon circumstances.
April 12, 2025
Julia Scully had an difficult childhood abandoned by her mother in an orphanage when her mother later came to get her and took her to Seattle with her aunt and later to northern Alaska. Her mother had a difficult life and this had a dramatic effect on Julia. The descriptions and stories are very honest and funny. I wonder where she is today.
January 15, 2022
Honest and gritty, Julia takes you on a twisted journey of a rocky childhood. I wish she’d share more about her inner world.
July 3, 2022
Well-told story of Depression-era childhood in Alaska with less than ideal family.
July 31, 2022
I started this as an audio book but finished it as an ebook. Maybe because I'm not a huge fan of audio books, I thought it translated much better to an ebook. A really good read.
September 3, 2025
Another "memoir" that didn't need to be written.
April 2, 2025
Interesting memoir of girl growing up during WWII. I was most interested in her description of life in Nome, since I was there about sixty years later and can understand the bleakness and darkness and cold. Her plain writing is appropriate.
April 7, 2013
Prefix: So I received the majority of my Grandma Henrickson's library when she moved from an apartment into a retirement home. This was one of those books. I took this as something of a challenge. As you can imagine there was not a lot of overlap between her preferences and mine. There were a fair number of books that did draw me in with some reference to Alaskan history. Having been born and raised in Alaska, I think I'll always be an Alaskan. I'll be passing this book, along with others from my Grandma, onto my little sister.
...
This particular book as written as non-fiction. An account of a woman growing from a young age into adulthood, the child of a most-often single-mother. My interest was piqued further as I discovered that she moved back and forth between Alaska and the San Francisco Bay Area of California several times during her early life.
I think the book did a great job of revealing some of the risk-taking, rugged self-reliance that I think of as Alaskan, viewed thru the lens of a youth.
On occasion, Julia is quite poetic. For instance, describing a double-feature at a movie theater as "spending four or five hours in dark anonymity."
...
This particular book as written as non-fiction. An account of a woman growing from a young age into adulthood, the child of a most-often single-mother. My interest was piqued further as I discovered that she moved back and forth between Alaska and the San Francisco Bay Area of California several times during her early life.
I think the book did a great job of revealing some of the risk-taking, rugged self-reliance that I think of as Alaskan, viewed thru the lens of a youth.
On occasion, Julia is quite poetic. For instance, describing a double-feature at a movie theater as "spending four or five hours in dark anonymity."
October 25, 2011
This was a quick read and I really enjoyed it. It is, among other things, a story of neglect, of a mother whose focus seems slightly off. She seems to care for her daughters, but distantly. The daughters are moved around from place to place, spending time in children's homes in California and Seattle, before bouncing around Alaska. Though their mother always provides food and lodging, they must fend for themselves emotionally and socially.
I left the book curious about what happens next. There is, of course, a brief synopsis of the author's life -- where she went to school, what she does for a living, where she is now, etc. -- but I wonder the path that took her from Alaska to Manhattan. What a shock that must have been.
I left the book curious about what happens next. There is, of course, a brief synopsis of the author's life -- where she went to school, what she does for a living, where she is now, etc. -- but I wonder the path that took her from Alaska to Manhattan. What a shock that must have been.
May 5, 2008
Slim little gem-- well-written memoir of photography editor who had an unlikely and harrowing childhood. Her mother, a Jewish immigrant, regularly abandoned the author and her sister, as she tried to make a life for herself. The author lived in depression-era San Francisco, two orphanages and very primitive Alaska, helping her mother run a bar for goldminers. Her tone is matter-of-fact and non-judgemental and she describes in fine detail her experiences just as they felt to her as a child. Quick read.
February 23, 2009
The way this book is written, you get the feeling of someone who spent her childhood in a dream state - perhaps more of a fugue state. She knew what was happening in her life - from San Francisco to Alaska, but she seems to have had little interest in understanding what was happening to the other people in her life, particularly her mother and her sister. In many ways, it was not a good upbringing and she left as soon as she could and never went back, but she is so low-key about it that you feel as if she has buried all of her feelings still.
May 8, 2009
I was haunted by the story of Julia and her family - it's definitely not your usual "a-huntn'-we-will-go" Alaskan biography. This state brings out the best and the worst in people. Julia's mother believed that it offered her the best of options, although she and the girls could not escape hardship, and exploitation, while struggling to keep their family together. Not a "comfortable" book, but worth the read.
May 8, 2015
Julia Scully, her sister, Lillian, & their mother try to eke out a living in Alaska. The girls never know what's up with their mother when she makes sudden moves to different places, & at times leaves the girls behind. At the end of the book Julia becomes independent & moves away, setting out on her own. Her sister had two brief marriages with three children & remains in Alaska with her mother.
June 14, 2009
At first I was perplexed by the spareness of language and ideas in this book, but I came to appreciate how it linked up with the issue of abandonment and self-preservation. Later, when the author is sent to Alaska the prose mirrors the empty and vast desolation of the Alaskan tundra that she lives in.
July 1, 2009
I picked up this book at a used bookstore because I wanted to read it for my History Book Group. This memoir is set in the starkness of the Alaskan Territory of the 1940s. The author paints a vivid portrait of the vastness and bleakness of the far north. Her family's silence and total dismissal of anything in their shared past only adds to the cold, lonely childhood of the author.
January 17, 2013
I'm catching up adding books to this site to use as my own reference.
Read it several years ago, so details are sketchy.
It's the genre of book that I dearly love to read.
An insight into an extremely difficult family life and into the extreme difficulty of life in northern Alaska in those years.
I enjoyed it.
Read in 2008.hhhh
Read it several years ago, so details are sketchy.
It's the genre of book that I dearly love to read.
An insight into an extremely difficult family life and into the extreme difficulty of life in northern Alaska in those years.
I enjoyed it.
Read in 2008.hhhh
May 5, 2009
I read this in preparation for my trip to Alaska in June 2009 and to get an idea of what WWII Alaska was like as my grandfather taught survival school in Nome, Alaska during that time. This is more than a memoir. Scully's cold and distant voice almost make you feel the ice of Alaska itself
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews