Description
Book SynopsisHundreds of hardy people have tried to carve out a living in the Alaskan bush, but few have succeeded as consistently as Heimo Korth. In The Final Frontiersman, Heimo''s cousin James Campbell chronicles Korth''s amazing life and adventures, creating a powerful, real-life epic of triumph and tragedy. Campbell spent two years witnessing firsthand the Korth family: Heimo, his wife Edna and their teenage daughters Rhonda and Krin. With impressive detail, the author recounts an everyday existence shaped by a harsh and unforgiving country. In their efforts to preserve the ecology of the land, the Korths lead a nomadic life, waiting patiently for the odd small plane to bring supplies and cultivating hard-earned hunting skills that are all that stand between them and lingering death. By turns inspiring and downright jolting, THE FINAL FRONTIERSMAN reads like a rustic version of the American Dream, in which the physical barriers of a stunning wilderness are no obstacle to forging a life outside
Trade Review"What makes this more than just a profile of a fascinating personality is Campbell's deft weaving of Alaskan history into Korth's tale."
--
Publishers Weekly"[One of] the greatest life-or-death tales ever told."
--
Esquire"Campbell makes the case that an increasingly urban America -- and its desires for oil, for timber, for neat and packaged wilderness -- is killing and, worse, forgetting the frontier we once worshiped."
--
The New York Times"The Final Frontiersman is an icily gripping, intimate profile that stands up well beside Krakauer's classic, and it stands too, as a kind of testament to the rough beauty of improbably wild dreams."
--
Men's Journal"Heimo Korth and his family face down more adventures in a typical week than most of us experience in a lifetime. A terrific first book -- by turns inspiring and unnerving and never less than wholly absorbing."
-- Bill Bryson, BOMC judge, writing in the
Book-of-the-Month Club News
