Library Catalog Record
Images
Metadata
Title |
Raised in Ruins |
Object # |
RC 2020.0.12.1 |
Object Name |
Book |
Call Number |
979.824 NEILSON |
Published Date |
2020 |
Author |
Neilson, Tara |
Publisher |
Alaska Northwest Books |
Edition |
first edition |
Description |
Raised in Ruins by Tara Neilson, 2020 "In the 1980s the Neilson family moved out on a floathouse to the remote site of a former cannery in Southeast Alaska that had burned to the ground before statehood. They were miles away from any neighbors, surrounded on all sides by wolves, bears and other wildlife, entering the world of subsistence living in an uninviting land of dangerous weather and storms; yet the Neilsons were able to make themselves a home where few others would have found possible. Led by a jack-of-all-trades handyman for a father and a mother who was afraid of everything in the wilderness, Tara and her four siblings cleared the rough terrain to build atop the blackened, rusty ruins a new way of life that was completely their own. From a young age, Tara learned that anything was possible, so long as one can imagine it and then make it happen. When given her mother’s impractical design of a six-bedroom house, her father picked up his tools and crafted it into a reality. To reach the closest community, they built a wooden boat sixteen feet long for the perilous journey on the water. The Alaska wilds required independence and self-sufficiency from the family, and in return it provided a natural landscape that inspired romantic passion and unlimited dreams. With endless forest on one side and the wide ocean on the other, Tara embraced the lonesomeness of the burned cannery ruins that she called home, and often wondered what it once was with its people inside, their stories, where they went, and what happened to them. Beautifully poignant and completely original, Raised in Ruins escapes into the wilderness to discover a piece of Alaskan history wrapped in an incredible family adventure fueled by love, strength, hard work, endurance, and boundless imagination." |
Provenance |
Museum acquisition. Tara Neilson is a writer and editor best known for her popular blog AlaskaForReal.com. A column based on her blog appeared in Capitol City Weekly and the Juneau Empire, and her writing has been published in Alaska Magazine, Writer's Digest, and Northwest Boat & Travel. Aside from writing, Tara has also worked as a cook for a remote Alaska guide boat, a wilderness nanny, and much more. She lives off grid in a floathouse she building herself in Southeast Alaska. |
Physical Description |
softcover paperback; cover is a stylized color photograph of two young girls on rocks at the beach; 274 pages |
ISBN |
978-1-5132-6263-5 |
People |
Neilson, Tara |
Search Terms |
Memoir Childhood Youth Woman Family Meyers Chuck Cannery Union Bay Cannery Float House |
Collection |
Ketchikan Museums, RC 2020.0.12.1 |