Pure and unexpected joy filled my heart during the Hardship Alaska book talk and World Café conversation at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Anchorage on June 6, 2023. I even reunited with four folks who knew me when I lived in a closet in the church’s basement fifty-plus years ago. Longtime friend and musician Mary Wagner LaFever and visual recorder Lee Post joined in helping me tell my story. And special thanks go out to Michael Burke, St. Mary’s rector, and his incredible staff for providing a warm, safe, inviting space.
St. Mary’s Episcopal Church—the old sanctuary now serving as a chapel. This is the church building I remember.The new sanctuary.Visual recorder, Jeff Post, captures the book talk World Café conversation in real time.Intimate table conversations invite people to respond to book experts, engage in collaboration dialogue and consider diverse perspectives.Longtime Alaskan friend, Mary Wagner LaFever.We knew each other when…Michael Burke, St. Mary’s Recvtor“Behind his clerical collar, Chuck was still a Kentucky boy at heart. He’d mix us tall, ice-filled glasses of overly-sweetened lemonade topped off with half a glass of bourbon each. We’d watch the clouds sweeping up from the base of the Chgach range, pushed aloft by winds cutting across the valley and coming to rest as if asleep on the tops of mountains.” —Hardship Alaska, Bourbon and Lemonade“As a kid I would paint watercolors of mountains I had never seen. I spent hours brushing gray wash backgrounds suitable for both sky and rocky terrain. Clouds sweeping up from the base of the range, pushed aloft by winds cutting across the valley and coming to rest, as if asleep, win the tops of mountains.” —Hardship Alaska, ForetellingsClick here to purchase your copy of Hardship Alaska at any of these major online booksellers.Or, click here to buy your copy of Hardship Alaska and support your favorite independent bookshop.
