Poets and Poems: Carlie Hoffman and "This Alaska"

The word that come to mind when reading This Alaska by Carlie Hoffman are gritty and sometimes jarring. And occasionally dark. Surprising, with a swing towards shocking. Consider “Continuum,” a poem about grief, that begins with “My mother split each day open / like a gutted fish.” Add vivid and arresting to that word list. 

She remembers childhood through not entirely rose-colored glasses, like where she buried the dead gulls. Her explanation for moving to New York City, a city with so many lunatics is that she sometimes becomes one of them. A visit to the zoo becomes a musing about a broken relationship. Eight years after she left, she watches a man sweeping the steps at her high school, and she hates him for not stopping to see her. (This longish poem, “Anniversary,” is my personal favorite in the collection, along with “Pact,” a poem about a desire to offer a small girl hope for the future.)

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Finding Romance in Alaska, Part 2

It’s late 1918. The Great War is approaching its end, but for Geoff Chambers, going on 21, the war may never end. He’s home in Juneau, Alaska, from the trenches in Europe, missing most of both legs. He’s bitter, angry, and suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. His family needs to get him away from Juneau. Reports of the Spanish flu epidemic are everywhere, and they need to isolate him from it so his physical recovery can continue.

Josephine Nimetz is 17. She works as a seamstress to help support her struggling family, but she also has experience nursing an ailing man. She’s on her way to deliver gloves to Mrs. Chambers when she’s accosted by her drunken stepfather, who’s demanding money for alcohol. He knocks her unconscious, and the Chambers find her and bring her to a room in their home. During the night, she hears a voice calling for water and discovers Geoff, who looks the very shell of a man.

His father makes an offer to Josephine and her mother. If she will care for Geoff at the family lodge on a nearby island for several months, until the threat of the epidemic passes, she’ll be well paid. Josephine and her mother agree, even though the girl knows she faces nine months caring for a young man who wants to die. In fact, the doctor gives him no more than two years unless something drastic changes in his attitude. Complicating Josephine’s work is that Geoff is already addicted to morphine.

Barbara Britton

Until June by Barbara Britton is the story of what happens on that island between Josephine and Geoff. It’s a romance novel, but it’s a bit unusual in not being a straight-line romance. There’s Geoff’s health, the deadline of when the job will end, family complications, and a friend of Geoff’s who is something less than kind to Josephine. There’s also the occasional bear, and a lurking dog that looks more like a wolf. 

Britton is the author of three romance novels in the Tribes of Israel series and three in the Daughters of Zelophehad series, aimed at teens in both the Christian and general markets. She’s a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Ullustrators,, Romance Writers of America, and Society of Wisconsin Romance Writers. A native of San Francisco, she lives with her family in Wisconsin.

Until June is solid, well-written historical fiction, with a well-researched geographic setting and background of World War I. It’s also a simply good story; I was so taken that I read it almost in one sitting.

Related

Finding Romance in Alaska, Part 1. 

Finding Romance in Alaska, Part 1

Sometimes you head north – the far north – to find romance.

Cadence Whitmore has arrived in Sunset Ridge, Alaska, for a somber purpose – the reading of her great-aunt Patty’s will. Patty has left the town’s star resort to Cadence and her two sisters, one a chef in New York City and the other married to a surgeon in Hawaii. Cadence herself is an aspiring real estate agent in Kansas. She has strong memories of the summer she and her sisters lived with Patty; Cadence was 13, her mother had died, and her father was unable to cope with his wife’s death. 

The plan is to list and sell the resort as soon as possible. Next-door neighbor Ford Harris has a different idea. He wants to see the resort reopened, and he has an incentive. His young sister is preparing to leave for college in Boston, and her scholarship only covers about half of what’s needed. Patty, in a separate document the Whitmore sisters don’t know about, promised $50,000 to Ford if he can convince them to reopen the lodge. Convincing “them” means first convincing Cadence, who’s the one on the scene and in charge of working with the attorney.

Jacqueline Winters

Ford is not interested in romance. He’s never really recovered from the death of his wife, and he’s been content to serve as brother and surrogate parent to his sister Riley. He first meets Cadence when she has something of a confrontation with Ed the Moose, and while he’s putting in plan in place to convince her to stay, he finds himself falling, and falling hard, for her.

Moose Be Love by Jacqueline Winters is the story of Cadence and Ford and the first in the author’s Sunset Ridge series. She’s also written several novels in the Starlight Cowboy series and the Simply Scandalous series. A native of Nebraska, Winters spent a decade living in Alaska.

It’s a fun story that ends as expected (and hoped for – that’s what romance novels are supposed to do). It also introduces Sophie and Tessa, the other Whitmore sisters, and it’s easy to see what’s coming next in the series. And a favorite character has to be Ed the Moose.

Related:

Romancing the Cowboy, Part 2: Four Novels.