2008 Woodie Awards
'Ordinary Wolves' author starts tour at UAA
Andri Grishkowsky
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“Ordinary Wolves” is no ordinary story and Seth Kantner is no ordinary author.
In his debut novel, Kantner sheds light on life in the Alaska Bush and shares with his readers an unfamiliar and candid look into the Last Frontier.
Kanter kicked off his book tour Oct. 18 by reading excerpts from his novel to an audience at the UAA Bookstore. His voice lifted images from the pages his book. His narration carried listeners to a place far from the cozy atmosphere of the bookstore and into a rudimentary realm of Arctic culture in transition.
“I wanted to show a lot of things with this book, but one of them was the changes that people have gone through in a short time up there,” Kantner said.
Kantner, 39, was born and raised in the remote wilderness of rural Alaska. His family lived in a sod-igloo along the banks of the Kobuk River, nestled in the beauty of Brooks Range. The nearest civilization was a village 30 miles upstream.
“Ordinary Wolves” is somewhat autobiographical, but the characters and scenes are fictitious. Growing up in the Bush, both Cutuk Hawcly (the main character in “Ordinary Wolves”) and Kantner grew attached to the people around them, but also found themselves distanced by their differences. Kantner said his upbringing taught him to “look at what things and people do to people. And even more, all the terrible things humans do to nature.”
His readings began in chapter one, when Cutuk was a 5-year-old boy. Kantner lowered his voice to draw the image of the Inupiaq elder, Enuk Wolfglove, whom Cutuk idolizes. Listeners smiled in the audience as he spoke in “ Village-English” dialogue, as it’s referred to in the book.
“To hear his voice reading the words that I’ve read, it just puts a sound to the whole story,” said Holly Nordlum, a recent UAA graduate with a bachelor’s in fine arts in graphic design.
Kantner read Cutuk’s experiences in Anchorage at the Dimond Center. He emphasized the overwhelming presence of streetlights, concrete and cars: all foreign elements to a now older Cutuk.
UAA music and theater major Erika Johnson, 24, has lived in Alaska her whole life. She hasn’t read the book yet, but plans to.
“A lot of people have this really idyllic kind of idea of what Alaska is like and it seems like it’s just this will be a book of what it really is, which is kind of nice to see instead of the big glamorized version,” Johnson said. “It just seems like something I’ll be able to connect with more.”
Kantner ended with a reading from the wolves’ perspective, a point-of-view Kantner interspersed throughout the novel.
Kantner’s love for the outdoors and his respect for nature marks the pages of his book with a message of solitude and preservation.
“You can’t grow up in the wilderness then go to Illinois—or even fly over—without saying ‘Oh no, look what we’ve done,’” Kantner said.
Kantner said he hopes to share this view of Alaska and to show “how beautiful and perfect the land and animals are all by themselves.”
“His one-liners are just so beautiful, just so profound,” said Mary Richards, an English teacher at South High School. “He captures that loneliness and the melancholy of being stuck between the worlds…this is the kind of writing that moves your soul.”
Writing a coming-of-age story like “Ordinary Wolves” has taught Kantner a lot about himself. It has helped him find who he is and where his place is in Alaska and in the world. He is a man with a unique life story and extraordinary passion for Alaska’s great outdoors. “I live outside; inside is just something that has to be done,” he said.
Kantner still visits the sod-igloo home he grew up in. He takes wildlife photos, writes, fishes commercially and occasionally teaches at Chukchi College. He received a bachelor’s degree in journalism after attending the University of Alaska and the University of Montana. Currently, he writes a monthly column, “Around Alaska,” for the Anchorage Daily News.