Outside Passage

When Julia Scully was seven years old, herfather committed suicide, and she and her sister were sent to an orphanage.Julia sought comfort in the rituals of the orphanage-learning to knit,roller-skating after dinner, listening to OneMan's Family on the radio-and tried to adapt. But two years later,emotionally damaged by the isolation and brutality of the orphanage, the girlsfollowed their mother to the near-wilderness of the gold-mining territory northof Nome, Alaska, where she had leased a roadhouse in the tiny settlement ofTaylor. Julia had no idea what to expect when she arrived, but to her surprise she found a healing power in the stark beauty of the vast tundra-the summerwildflowers and berries, the reindeer, foxes, and wolves. Later she reveled inthe boisterous, chaotic boomtown atmosphere that prevailed when thousands ofAmerican troops descended on Nome at the outbreak of World War II.A lyrical and affecting memoir of those years, OutsidePassage is simultaneously anemotional account of a young girl's first steps into adulthood and a uniqueportrait of a vanished frontier life.