From Kansas Wheat Fields to Alaska Tundra by Naomi Gaede-Penner

What is the prescription for finding home in Alaska? Take one young Mennonite girl and transplant her from the flatland prairies of Kansas. Give her village potlatches, school in a Quonset hut, the fragrance of wood smoke, Native friends, a doctor for a father who creates hunting tales and medical adventures with a bush plane, a mother who makes the tastiest moose roasts and has the grit to be a homesteader, and throw in a batch of siblings. Weave into her journey the perspectives of her family members and have them face the lack of conveniences, isolation from extended family, freezing temperatures, and unknown hardships. Mix all these together with an attitude of humor, ingenuity, optimism, and you'll get a sense of adventure! 'We come to Alaska for different reasonsjob, love, adventure, a new startor because we're born here. We stay because we find what we're looking for in short: home. Home is a sense of fitting in, a feeling rather than a structure of wood and shingles. The Gaede