Koviashuvik

Making a Home in the Brooks Range

Sam Wright (Author)
Paperback ($19.95) Buy
On a slope above a mountain lake in Alaska’s Brooks Range, Sam and Billie Wright built a twelve-by-twelve-foot log cabin with hand tools and named it Koviashuvik—an Eskimo word meaning "living in the present moment with quiet joy and happiness." Sam’s account of the twenty years they spent there is both a tale of wilderness survival and an inspiring meditation on the natural world and humanity’s relationship to it.
"His powerful memoir . . . begins with him confronting a bear that’s trying to break into his house at four in the morning and goes on to cover natural Arctic events . . . Wright smoothly combines science and philosophy in this graceful work, attuned to the physical and spiritual mysteries of nature."—Kirkus Reviews

"The Eskimo concept of koviashuvik resonates at the core of Wright’s thinking and of this book . . . The Eskimos, like the Wrights, understood that to experience koviashuvik one must live in harmony with nature, not separately and apart from it."—Bloomsbury Review

"This is the best book about Alaska written this decade, possibly this half-century."—Booklist
Koviashuvik
223 Pages 6 x 9 x 0.6
Published: July 1997Paperback ISBN: 9780816517954

For Authors

The University of Arizona Press publishes the work of leading scholars from around the globe. Learn more about submitting a proposal, preparing your final manuscript, and publication.

Inquire

Requests

The University of Arizona Press is proud to share our books with readers, booksellers, media, librarians, scholars, and instructors. Join our email Newsletter. Request reprint licenses, information on subsidiary rights and translations, accessibility files, review copies, and desk and exam copies.

Request

Support the Press

Support a premier publisher of academic, regional, and literary works. We are committed to sharing past, present, and future works that reflect the special strengths of the University of Arizona and support its land-grant mission.

Give