Arctic son

In 1992, Jean Aspen, her husband Tom, and their young son left modern life behind for a remote stretch of Alaska's interior. They raised a log cabin with their own hands, relied on hunting for meat, and lived surrounded by the Arctic's stark and overwhelming landscape.

Jean had already known Alaska's backcountry through an earlier experience she later wrote about in Arctic Daughter, but this time the stakes were higher. Illness and constant hardship, along with isolation from the outside world, pushed the family to hold on to their endurance, their health, and their chances of survival. Daily battles with the weather and terrain sat alongside a close call with a grizzly bear, and moments of striking beauty and personal discovery.

The story covers fourteen months in the Arctic and ends with a six-hundred-mile journey by river back to civilization. Part survival portrait, part adventure narrative, the book follows one family's venture into America's last frontier.