My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/SS4lHCl6vY4

Enjoy! ( )

A Place Beyond: Finding Home in Arctic Alaska
By Nic Jans

A Place Beyond is a collection of 28 thoughtful and pleasurable essays by Jans. These informative and engaging tales of life in the Alaskan Arctic are easy to read and should prove to be popular with fans of Gary Paulsen, Will Hobbs, and Jack London. Jans has been aptly described as having the ‘eye of an outdoorsman and the heart of a poet’ (from the publisher review of “Last Light Breaking: Living among Alaska’s Inupiat Eskimos” on amazon.com). I enjoyed A Place Beyond and will energetically recommend this book to my teen students in pursuit of their next armchair adventure.

If home is where the heart is, then Nick Jans will always have a home in arctic Alaska.

Fleeing a “future that looked all too certain,” Jans drove 5,000 miles to Alaska. He ended up teaching in a village school in the arctic, living in a cabin with no indoor plumbing and dealing with battalions of mosquitoes, winter darkness that could drive a person mad and temperatures that can easily kill.

In these 28 essays in A Place Beyond: Finding Home in Arctic Alaska, Jans talks about the little things and the big—the things that have made arctic Alaska a home for him. The people, who are basically decent but certainly not perfect (as is evidenced by some of the things that Clarence does, such as shooting a mother bear simply because he could). The area is beautiful but can easily turn deadly. The wildlife is magnificent, but it, too, can easily turn deadly.

Jans does a good job of drawing the reader into this world. He also does well at not idealizing the place and the people; he lived there and worked there. It is what it is, and, for him, it is home. ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed Nick Jans’ book of Essays “A Place Beyond. Finding Home in Artic Alaska.” In each short essay, Mr. Jans brings to life some small facet of life in an Eskimo village. Various essays focus on wildlife, the village community, travel in the Artic, and the Alaskan seasons, each providing an interesting look at its particular aspect of Alaskan life. In particular, the essay describing the mosquitos that emerge during the brief summer season was particularly vivid, enough so that if I ever travel to Alaska in summer, I will be sure to pack large quantities of bug repellent. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in life in Artic Alaska. ( )

A Place Beyond is a slim gem of a book of essays about the Alaskan Arctic. The concisely and lyrically written essays describe Nick Jans’ impressions and experiences of life in the land he has come to call “home”. Jans’ writing is sometimes humorous and often profound and captures the essence and nuances of the land, the wildlife, and the people. Treat yourself to this book.