Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Tara Neilson is a writer and editor best known for her popular blog Alaska For Real, which she created in response to the Alaska Bush People. A column based on her blog appeared in Capital City Weekly and the Juneau Empire. She was also a professional freelance book editor and has been published in Alaska Magazine, Writer’s Digest, Northwest Boat & Travel, and more. Tara lives off the grid in a floathouse in Alaska.
"When 9 year-old Tara Neilson, parents, and 4 young siblings moved out to an abandoned cannery near Wrangell in 1980, they were resettling a piece of Alaska history. Canneries were the engines that drove the coastal economy for a good century, and when refrigeration allowed canneries to move into town, many, essentially whole little villages in the wilderness, were abandoned overnight. Tara’s dad worked at a distant logging camp, boated home for weekends, Mom did what she could. But as Tara puts it, the kids turned feral. Lucky for us, young Tara kept a journal: of adventures, of new skills learned, some small: how to make Walkman batteries last longer. But some critical: how to safely drive a small boat full of siblings through rough waters, how to deal with bears on the trail home. But her book is also a reflection on place: the aura of the cannery that surrounded them, the children wondering about the immigrants from many countries who spent so much of their lives there. Neilson completes the circle by finding and sharing accounts of the lives of some of those workers. All in all <i>Raised in Ruins</i> is a rich look at unique Alaskan lives with a fascinating bit of history thrown in as well!"
<b>Joe Upton, author <i>Alaska Blues</i></b>
"Describes an upbringing in which the realities and challenges of subsistence living coincided with memorable adventures and natural wonder."
<b>Library Journal</b>
"Tara Neilson reflects on a childhood spent in the wilderness, preparing for the apocalypse."
<b>Literary Hub</b>
"If anyone doubts that children are resilient, capable of handling a harsh environment and sometimes fragile family circumstances with their love for the outdoors and family intact, this book proves that they are — or at least can be. . . While <i>Raised in Ruins</i> is her first book, we can hope for much more from this attentive, compassionate, imaginative, resourceful and very skillful writer. "
<b>Anchorage Daily News</b>
"Unique Childhood: A Memoir of Escape and Home. As a kid living the frontier life in the ruins of an old cannery in southeast Alaska with her family, Tara Neilson discovered the joys of roaming free, the hard work of homeschooling, and the challenges of existing outside of society's lines. <i>Raised in Ruins</i> takes readers on a journey only Neilson can tell, through adventures with siblings, her parents' relationships to work and wilderness, surviving bear encounters, and how the author formed her unique perception of time. Sprinkled throughout with bits of regional and cannery history, this memoir paints a picture of a time and place forever."
<b>Alaska Magazine</b>
Featured on LitHub.
An extraordinary memoir of a woman’s unconventional childhood growing up in the Alaskan wilderness, on the grounds where the burned remains of a cannery once stood.
In the 1980s the Neilson family moved out on a floathouse to the remote site of a former cannery in Southeast Alaska that had burned to the ground before statehood. They were miles away from any neighbors, surrounded on all sides by wolves, bears and other wildlife, entering the world of subsistence living in an uninviting land of dangerous weather and storms; yet the Neilsons were able to make themselves a home where few others would have found possible. Led by a jack-of-all-trades handyman for a father and a mother who was afraid of everything in the wilderness, Tara and her four siblings cleared the rough terrain to build atop the blackened, rusty ruins a new way of life that was completely their own.
From a young age, Tara learned that anything was possible, so long as one can imagine it and then make it happen. When given her mother’s impractical design of a six-bedroom house, her father picked up his tools and crafted it into a reality. To reach the closest community, they built a wooden boat sixteen feet long for the perilous journey on the water. The Alaska wilds required independence and self-sufficiency from the family, and in return it provided a natural landscape that inspired romantic passion and unlimited dreams. With endless forest on one side and the wide ocean on the other, Tara embraced the lonesomeness of the burned cannery ruins that she called home, and often wondered what it once was with its people inside, their stories, where they went, and what happened to them.
Beautifully poignant and completely original, Raised in Ruins escapes into the wilderness to discover a piece of Alaskan history wrapped in an incredible family adventure fueled by love, strength, hard work, endurance, and boundless imagination.
- Author events in Alaska and elsewhere based on author’s travels.
- Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest promotions to target audiences, including fans of AK Reality TV, sharing excerpts, recipes, off-grid living and wildlife watching tips, etc.
- Amazon Vine, Goodreads, Indie Advance Access giveaways.
- Reviews, features, and mentions in trade, women's, family, outdoor, cabin life, survival, and regional media.
- Outreach to mom and off-grid bloggers and influencers who covered One Man’s Wilderness.
- Featured at ALA, BEA, PNBA, and MPIBA conferences.
One day when it was just my mom and us kids alone in the New House we’d built in the wilderness with our own labor, with lumber our dad milled himself, a huge brown bear paced back and forth in front of the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows in our game room where we spent most of our time.
Back and forth, back and forth, it paced agitatedly, disturbed by our presence next to the salmon-choked creek. Our mom was terrified of guns, but she got down the 30.06, which she probably couldn’t have shot if she tried, and told us kids to get upstairs. We ignored her.
We figured if the bear broke in we’d all scatter and the bear might get one or two of us, but he wouldn’t get us all. Our tension escalated as the huge mound of fur, teeth and claws continued its angry pacing. Finally he rounded the house, going around the kitchen to the front where our temporary door was made of thin pieces of wood and plastic. If it sneezed, the bear could break through it.
We followed it from room to room, our hearts beating uncomfortably hard. Finally, we saw it head down to the creek. With the gun in hand, Mom stepped outside to make sure it kept going. She told us to stay inside, but, again, we ignored her.
Suddenly my youngest brother, Chris, took off after the bear.
“What are you doing? Get back here!” Mom whisper-yelled, afraid of alerting the bear. She gripped the gun helplessly. “Christopher Michael! Get back here, right now!” Chris kept running, gaining on the bear.
The rest of kids stared after him, shocked. When no one moved, I sprinted after him. In front of us the huge bear lumbered toward the shining creek filled with salmon fins and sea gulls. This is crazy, this is crazy, I thought as I ran toward the bear.
I collared Chris, and dragged him back. He fought me every inch of the way. I cast glances over my shoulder, sure the bear would come after us and shred us to pieces in front of our family.
Fortunately, we all escaped a mauling that day.
"When 9 year-old Tara Neilson, parents, and 4 young siblings moved out to an abandoned cannery near Wrangell in 1980, they were resettling a piece of Alaska history. Canneries were the engines that drove the coastal economy for a good century, and when refrigeration allowed canneries to move into town, many, essentially whole little villages in the wilderness, were abandoned overnight. Tara’s dad worked at a distant logging camp, boated home for weekends, Mom did what she could. But as Tara puts it, the kids turned feral. Lucky for us, young Tara kept a journal: of adventures, of new skills learned, some small: how to make Walkman batteries last longer. But some critical: how to safely drive a small boat full of siblings through rough waters, how to deal with bears on the trail home. But her book is also a reflection on place: the aura of the cannery that surrounded them, the children wondering about the immigrants from many countries who spent so much of their lives there. Neilson completes the circle by finding and sharing accounts of the lives of some of those workers. All in all <i>Raised in Ruins</i> is a rich look at unique Alaskan lives with a fascinating bit of history thrown in as well!"
<b>Joe Upton, author <i>Alaska Blues</i></b>
"Describes an upbringing in which the realities and challenges of subsistence living coincided with memorable adventures and natural wonder."
<b>Library Journal</b>
"Tara Neilson reflects on a childhood spent in the wilderness, preparing for the apocalypse."
<b>Literary Hub</b>
"If anyone doubts that children are resilient, capable of handling a harsh environment and sometimes fragile family circumstances with their love for the outdoors and family intact, this book proves that they are — or at least can be. . . While <i>Raised in Ruins</i> is her first book, we can hope for much more from this attentive, compassionate, imaginative, resourceful and very skillful writer. "
<b>Anchorage Daily News</b>
"Unique Childhood: A Memoir of Escape and Home. As a kid living the frontier life in the ruins of an old cannery in southeast Alaska with her family, Tara Neilson discovered the joys of roaming free, the hard work of homeschooling, and the challenges of existing outside of society's lines. <i>Raised in Ruins</i> takes readers on a journey only Neilson can tell, through adventures with siblings, her parents' relationships to work and wilderness, surviving bear encounters, and how the author formed her unique perception of time. Sprinkled throughout with bits of regional and cannery history, this memoir paints a picture of a time and place forever."
<b>Alaska Magazine</b>
Featured on LitHub.
An extraordinary memoir of a woman’s unconventional childhood growing up in the Alaskan wilderness, on the grounds where the burned remains of a cannery once stood.
In the 1980s the Neilson family moved out on a floathouse to the remote site of a former cannery in Southeast Alaska that had burned to the ground before statehood. They were miles away from any neighbors, surrounded on all sides by wolves, bears and other wildlife, entering the world of subsistence living in an uninviting land of dangerous weather and storms; yet the Neilsons were able to make themselves a home where few others would have found possible. Led by a jack-of-all-trades handyman for a father and a mother who was afraid of everything in the wilderness, Tara and her four siblings cleared the rough terrain to build atop the blackened, rusty ruins a new way of life that was completely their own.
From a young age, Tara learned that anything was possible, so long as one can imagine it and then make it happen. When given her mother’s impractical design of a six-bedroom house, her father picked up his tools and crafted it into a reality. To reach the closest community, they built a wooden boat sixteen feet long for the perilous journey on the water. The Alaska wilds required independence and self-sufficiency from the family, and in return it provided a natural landscape that inspired romantic passion and unlimited dreams. With endless forest on one side and the wide ocean on the other, Tara embraced the lonesomeness of the burned cannery ruins that she called home, and often wondered what it once was with its people inside, their stories, where they went, and what happened to them.
Beautifully poignant and completely original, Raised in Ruins escapes into the wilderness to discover a piece of Alaskan history wrapped in an incredible family adventure fueled by love, strength, hard work, endurance, and boundless imagination.
- Author events in Alaska and elsewhere based on author’s travels.
- Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest promotions to target audiences, including fans of AK Reality TV, sharing excerpts, recipes, off-grid living and wildlife watching tips, etc.
- Amazon Vine, Goodreads, Indie Advance Access giveaways.
- Reviews, features, and mentions in trade, women's, family, outdoor, cabin life, survival, and regional media.
- Outreach to mom and off-grid bloggers and influencers who covered One Man’s Wilderness.
- Featured at ALA, BEA, PNBA, and MPIBA conferences.
One day when it was just my mom and us kids alone in the New House we’d built in the wilderness with our own labor, with lumber our dad milled himself, a huge brown bear paced back and forth in front of the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows in our game room where we spent most of our time.
Back and forth, back and forth, it paced agitatedly, disturbed by our presence next to the salmon-choked creek. Our mom was terrified of guns, but she got down the 30.06, which she probably couldn’t have shot if she tried, and told us kids to get upstairs. We ignored her.
We figured if the bear broke in we’d all scatter and the bear might get one or two of us, but he wouldn’t get us all. Our tension escalated as the huge mound of fur, teeth and claws continued its angry pacing. Finally he rounded the house, going around the kitchen to the front where our temporary door was made of thin pieces of wood and plastic. If it sneezed, the bear could break through it.
We followed it from room to room, our hearts beating uncomfortably hard. Finally, we saw it head down to the creek. With the gun in hand, Mom stepped outside to make sure it kept going. She told us to stay inside, but, again, we ignored her.
Suddenly my youngest brother, Chris, took off after the bear.
“What are you doing? Get back here!” Mom whisper-yelled, afraid of alerting the bear. She gripped the gun helplessly. “Christopher Michael! Get back here, right now!” Chris kept running, gaining on the bear.
The rest of kids stared after him, shocked. When no one moved, I sprinted after him. In front of us the huge bear lumbered toward the shining creek filled with salmon fins and sea gulls. This is crazy, this is crazy, I thought as I ran toward the bear.
I collared Chris, and dragged him back. He fought me every inch of the way. I cast glances over my shoulder, sure the bear would come after us and shred us to pieces in front of our family.
Fortunately, we all escaped a mauling that day.