“The Snow Fell Off the Mountain” is an invitation to readers to turn back the calendar and imagine for themselves what Alaska’s coastal life might have been like in a simpler, more slowly moving time, not that long ago.
Beginning in the 1970s Dan Strickland fished commercially all over Alaska — in Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound and Bristol Bay. He and his wife now make their home in Palmer, where they run a small-batch coffee roastery. Clearly, though, he never shook fishing from his system, and his experience permeates “The Snow Fell Off the Mountain,” his first book.
While the action is fast and furious, Strickland is especially skilled at evoking both the halcyon days and joys of salmon fishing and the terrors of crossing bars and breakers and fighting through storms. He’s thoroughly adept at recreating a time in the fishing industry before cellphones, refrigerated seawater, fish pumps for offloading fish, and sophisticated electronics.
Soon after, the secondary character, Paul, arrives by ferry “into the heart of Alaska, the last great bosom of anonymity.” He has a black eye and swollen face, looking very much as though he’s been in a fight, and is clearly fleeing something. The mystery will hold until almost halfway through the book.And then there’s the beautiful Sophie, who cooks and cleans and handles grocery orders on the tender, working for an obese and unsavory man named Moose. Rafe is smitten at his first sight of her.
Two minor characters are perhaps most memorable. The old Maltese fisherman gives Paul his first deckhand job and is charming, kind and humorous. He shouts sometimes in Maltese and otherwise speaks with a heavy accent. “Ze devil takes hees chance wi’ me!” The begrimed Gene, a hermit who lives in a hut in the woods, dresses all in black except for the white cotton gloves he wears to read Dostoyevsky.
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