INSPIRED BY ALASKA
Lesley Thomas dog sledding as a child
Thomas grew up in Arctic and Southeast Alaska and on a small farm on the Salish Sea. Her multicultural family blends indigenous and “outsider” traditions. To write her stories, Thomas draws on her lifelong roots in Alaska’s wilderness and rural communities and what her elders and nature taught her firsthand.
Thomas studies prolifically for her work — arctic salt marsh oil spills, cultural diversity, history, nature, biology. She’s lived and worked worked overseas, and now lives in Seattle. She flies home to Nome often to visit beloved family and climb the high hills.
Lesley Thomas dog sledding as a child
The Confessional
We asked & our authors answered…
Lesley has been known to…imitate the calls of birds, wolves and farm animals
Things she likes…mythology, science, and feathers
She’ll never get caught…outrunning a bear
A favorite/line expression and where it’s from: “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth” ~A Few Good Men
Alaskans she most admires: Dolly Spencer, Harold Napoleon, Velma Wallis
Favorite Alaska places: Seward Peninsula, fishing hamlets of Southeast Alaska, her mom’s fish camp at Cape Nome
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Description
Lesley Thomas grew up in the Arctic in a multicultural family from ancient and new traditions. Her elders taught her to live off the land. From their stories and the lessons taught by observing nature, Thomas grew into a natural storyteller.
1971, the Alaskan Arctic. “It was a time when much was hidden, before outsiders came on bended knee to learn from the elders. Outsiders came, but it was not to learn from us; it was to change us. There was a war and a university, an oil company and a small village, all run by men. There was a young man who hunted geese to feed his family and another who studied geese to save them. And there was a young woman who flew into the world of spirits to save herself…”
So relates Kayuqtuq Ugungoraseok, “the red fox.” An orphan traumatized by her past, she seeks respect in her traditional Inupiaq village through the outlawed path of shamanism. Her plan leads to tragedy when she interferes with scientist Leif Trygvesen, who has come to research the effects of oil spills on salt marshes – and evade the draft.
Told from both Kayuqtuq’s and Leif’s perspectives, Flight of the Goose is a tale of cultural conflict, spiritual awakening, redemption and love in a time when things were – to use the phrase of an old arctic shaman – “no longer familiar.”
Flight of the Goose has been studied at North Slope School District, University of Washington, University of Alaska, Boston University, Sterling College, and others.
Sneaky Peek
HOW DO I BEGIN? It is dark winter. A little girl’s mother is dead — she’s got no father. She struggles against the wind as she pushes a sled filled with ice, which she has chipped from a pond with her thin arms. Her mukluks are old, the fur shedding. Her gloves are not meant for the Arctic. Her parka is old, resewn rabbit skins so thin the gales blow through but just warm enough if she moves fast. The girl is fed last, when the poor parts of game are all that’s left and no fat.
