Alaskan Pioneer Girl: A Memoir of America's Last Frontier

by Judy Johnson

Alaskan Pioneer memoir of America’s Last Frontier is a memoir of my first twenty years in Alaska in the 1950s and 60s,and will appeal to most history enthusiasts.I am born into a family forging ahead as pioneers, but all screeches to a tragic end with the death of my sister, Sherry, forcing us to relocate. Family life restarts in Homer with me being a mischievous middle child hoping to follow in my older sister’s footsteps.Instead,I am wrenched from her, my town friends,andcomforts,to the wilderness when my parents make a claim on 160 acres of free Government land on Porcupine Lake—60 miles away.We live by the requirements laid down by Abraham Lincoln in the Homestead Act 100 years earlier. Our first home is a tent,and we live off the land--hunting and butchering moose, fishing salmon and harvesting large vegetable gardens.My brothers and I are surrounded by fundamentalist Christians in the local school and find salvation at Solid Rock Bible Camp. The last chapters are of the bumpy road to love on my return to Homer for high school.Sprinkled throughout are family recipes.

251 pages, Paperback

Published May 6, 2022

About the author

Judy Johnson has published four poetry collections, a verse novel and two chapbooks, a novel with another forthcoming in November 2014.

She has won many prizes for poetry including the Victorian Premiers award, Wesley Michel Wright Prize twice, Josephine Ulrick and Val Vallis award and been shortlisted in many others including the West Australian Premier's Award.