Still Points North

Still Points North (2013) by Leigh Newman. When she was a young girl, Newman's parents divorced. Her father stayed in Alaska, where he was a doctor and hunter and fisherman, and her mother moved to Baltimore, where she was from. Newman was forced by the divorce agreement to divide her time between the two parents, and the whole experience left her a seriously confused girl. The times she seems to remember most vividly, though, are the times she spent with her father, fishing for salmon and hunting elk in Alaska. The subtitle of the book is "One Alaskan childhood, one grown-up world, one long journey home." Newman does eventually find peace, and even gets married and has children, but she never forgets her crazy mixed-up childhood, and who could? She is now deputy editor and head of books coverage for Oprah.com, so she's come up out of her experiences in OK shape, but her description of childhood experiences is truly harrowing. Grade: B+