For the second consecutive year, an Alaska author has scored big at the National Outdoor Book Awards, announced Thursday in Pocatello, Idaho.
Kim Heacox of Gustavus earned the first award given to a work of fiction in the competition for the recently released "Jimmy Bluefeather," one of several books Heacox published this year. It won the Outdoor Literature-Fiction category.
A year ago, Erin McKittrick of Seldovia captured the Outdoor Literature-Nonfiction category with her book "Small Feet, Big Land: Adventure, Home and Family on the Edge of Alaska." McKittrick is a regular contributor to We Alaskans magazine.
Heacox's story is about a 95-year-old Tlingit man named Old Keb, the last living canoe carver in a small village in Southeast Alaska. The old man begins work on what will become his last great canoe. Along with his grandson, two friends and a dog named Steve, they embark on a voyage to the Tlingit ancestral homeland.
"This is a masterful portrait of contemporary Alaska," said Ron Watters, chair of the National Outdoor Book Awards Foundation, in a press release. "What makes this story so appealing is the character Old Keb. He is as memorable as any character in literature and adds a humor and warmth that will keep you reading well into the night."
In her September review of "Jimmy Bluefeather", We Alaskans book critic Nancy Lord, a former Alaska writer laureate, said:
"Heacox, an exquisite writer, presents us with an Alaska true to its self, beautifully drawn...
"'Jimmy Bluefeather' is a superb addition to Alaska — indeed, American — literature. With enough readership, Old Keb Wisting could become as beloved a character as 'To Kill a Mockingbird's' Atticus Finch. Not heroic but human, with qualities of toughness, resilience, acceptance and humor, learned as an Alaskan from a life of living close to the Earth and its waters, in a place of stories."
It's been a busy 18 months for Heacox, with the release of "John Muir and the Ice that Started a Fire", "Rhythm of the Wild: A Life Inspired by Alaska's Denali National Park," "Jimmy Bluefeather" and "The National Parks: An Illustrated History" a National Geographic book commemorating the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service next year.
"Not that any of this came easily," Lord wrote in her review. "Each of these books was many years in the making -- Heacox might say a lifetime. It's just that his long, hard work finally paid off with the attention of publishers and the book world. What's perhaps most impressive, beyond the timing, is the diversity of the … books, each in a different genre and involving significant research and imagination."
Another Alaskan, Kate Wynne, won the Nature Guidebooks category for "Guide to Marine Mammals and Turtles of the U.S. Pacific". Wynne is a professor in the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and is the Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program's marine mammal specialist. Wynne previously wrote the "Guide to Marine Mammals of Alaska," which, according to Amazon, has sold more than 34,000 copies.