We are overjoyed that you have chosen to join us for yet another journey into our great country’s history. Again—as with our other collaborations—we’d like to reiterate that while this novel is rich with historical detail about Curry, Alaska, its incredible Curry Hotel, the Alaska Railroad, Talkeetna, Denali (Mount McKinley), and the people who lived and breathed this little bit of history—please remember that this is a work of fiction. While many real people are used in the story, their personalities and dialogue are from our imaginations. Please see the Dear Reader letter at the conclusion of the book to find out more details about the amazing research for this series and the author liberties that were taken.
We (Kimberley and Tracie) are passionate about Alaska. Kim’s family lived there for many years and Tracie has spent oodles of time in that great state as well. On our last book tour together, our readers told us over and over how excited they were for another Alaska book. So here it is.
Curry, Alaska, and the grand Curry Hotel were very real indeed, although now the only way to see it is through the lens of historical photographs. At mile 248 on the Alaska Railroad today there are interpretive signs and a few lost remnants of Curry. The historic Curry Lookout is the only remaining piece still standing of this fascinating part of Alaska’s history.
To give you a glimpse into this time and setting, we’d like to share an excerpt from the Preface of a book written by one of the team that was the very first to summit the tallest mountain in North America, Denali, back in 1913. Hudson Stuck’s passion for Alaska, its peoples, its lands, and its mountains is commendable to this day. And one hundred years after the publication of his book, we would see the author’s wish and desire come to fruition as the Great Mountain was rightly given back his true name: Denali.
From The Ascent of Denali by Hudson Stuck (Scribner, 1914):
Forefront in this book, because forefront in the author’s heart and desire, must stand a plea for the restoration to the greatest mountain in North America of its immemorial native name. If there be any prestige or authority in such matter from the accomplishment of a first complete ascent, “if there be any virtue, if there be any praise,” the author values it chiefly as it may give weight to this plea.
It is now little more than seventeen years ago that a prospector penetrated from the south into the neighborhood of this mountain, guessed its height with remarkable accuracy at twenty thousand feet, and, ignorant of any name that it already bore, placed upon it the name of the Republican candidate for President of the United States at the approaching election—William McKinley . . .
. . . The author would add, perhaps quite unnecessarily, yet lest any should mistake, a final personal note. He is no professed explorer or climber or “scientist,” but a missionary, and of these matters an amateur only. The vivid recollection of a back bent down with burdens and lungs at the limit of their function makes him hesitate to describe this enterprise as recreation. It was the most laborious undertaking with which he was ever connected; yet it was done for the pleasure of doing it, and the pleasure far outweighed the pain. But he is concerned much more with men than mountains, and would say, since “out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh,” that his especial and growing concern, these ten years past, is with the native people of Alaska, a gentle and kindly race, now threatened with a wanton and senseless extermination, and sadly in need of generous champions if that threat is to be averted.
And so, dear friends, we take you back a century to the dawn of a new era for Alaska. A new national park, the first successful attempt to climb Denali, the people who loved the land, the pioneers who blazed the trails, the railroad that connected it all, and the incredible Curry Hotel in the remote Alaska Territory.
We give you: In the Shadow of Denali.
Kim and Tracie