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Book Summary and Reviews of Walking Home by Lynn Schooler

Walking Home by Lynn Schooler

Walking Home

A Traveler in the Alaskan Wilderness, a Journey into the Human Heart

by Lynn Schooler

  • Critics' Consensus (1):
  • Published:
  • May 2010, 272 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

In the spring of 2007, hard on the heels of the worst winter in the history of Juneau, Alaska, Lynn Schooler finds himself facing the far side of middle age and exhausted by laboring to handcraft a home as his marriage slips away. Seeking solace and escape in nature, he sets out on a solo journey into the Alaskan wilderness, traveling first by small boat across the formidable Gulf of Alaska, then on foot along one of the wildest coastlines in North America.

Walking Home is filled with stunning observations of the natural world, and rife with nail-biting adventure as Schooler fords swollen rivers and eludes aggressive grizzlies. But more important, it is a story about finding wholeness - and a sense of humanity - in the wild. His is a solitary journey, but Schooler is never alone; human stories people the landscape - tales of trappers, explorers, marooned sailors, and hermits, as well as the mythology of the region's Tlingit Indians. Alone in the middle of several thousand square miles of wilderness, Schooler conjures the souls of travelers past to learn how the trials of life may be better borne with the help and community of others.

Walking Home recalls Jonathan Raban's Passage to Juneau or Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, but with a more successful outcome. With elegance and soul, Schooler creates a conversation between the human and the natural, the past and present, to investigate what it means to be a part of the flow of human history.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"A rich account of a man’s solo adventure into the wilderness, and what he learned about that place and himself." - Kirkus Reviews

"Schooler ... reclaims [Alaska's] true wilderness aesthetic in his chronicle of a solo trip along the southeast coastal region ... [He] is the real deal and he proves it on every gorgeous page." - Booklist

This information about Walking Home was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Lynn Schooler

Lynn Schooler is the critically acclaimed author of The Blue Bear and The Last Shot. He has lived in Alaska for almost forty years, working as a commercial fisherman, shipwright, wilderness guide, and an award-winning wildlife photographer.

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