Book Review: Talkeetna Twines: Alaska Wilderness Survival, Mystery and Romance

The entire title is actually "Talkeetna Twines Alaska Wilderness Survival Mystery and Romance. On page one a recently widowed Rebecca is running into the Alaska wilderness in late spring, a fugitive from the law. She has a running conversation of unending angst with her dead husband for about 6 months and 200 pages while she makes herself a wilderness home in a dugout high in the mountains. During this conversation the reader learns nothing they didn't know at the end of the chapter one.

As luck would have it Rebecca almost immediately finds a wild dog as a companion who can protect her from bears etc., and a stray horse which makes it a lot easier for her to drag logs up the mountain to build her shelter and a horse corral. A city girl new to bush Alaska she still somehow knows exactly which plants will provide her food, hunt, gather, preserve food, make fire without matches, build a dugout, make clothes from hides etc. She meets two other wilderness residents, an old fellow who mans a weather station, and a young handsome rancher. This introduces both the crisis of discovery and an angst ridden romance plot that runs thinly through the book .

The survival story which is a bit over the top and mostly unbelievable, overwhelms the slight and predictable evangelical Christian romance thread so I doubt romance fans will be satisfied. Its not a warm and fuzzy read. Nor willi t satisfy mystery readers. The mystery of exactly how her husband dies and why Rebecca is running has no clues to develop, she knows who did it but doesn't tell the reader, and there is no particular resolution about "why" where a mystery buff would say "Aha!" The book was written well technically. I would suggest however, that unless the reader absolutely loves introspection, angst or day to day detail of building fires and killing food, there is little to recommend it.