Book Review: Alaska in the Wake of the North Star by Loel Shuler

Loel Shuler's book on Alaska was finally published - a mere half-century after she wrote it.

The way she sees it, though, the delay made it a better book, and surprisingly, more timely.

"It's about the Alaska that has vanished," said Shuler, who lived in Alaska for 20 years before moving to the Monterey Peninsula in the early 1970s. "It's better that I didn't publish it then. It's much more significant now."

The Alaska she knew then was still mostly wild and free. But hints of what was to come were already apparent to Shuler when she made the initial voyage there in 1949.

"There's no evading the fact that Western culture will ultimately absorb Alaska. Good or bad, it is as inevitable as a steamroller," she wrote then in her journal.

Shuler, however, was able to see and experience Alaska before much of the change happened, thanks to an extraordinary three-month ocean journey aboard the USMS North Star II.

It is this odyssey that forms the heart of her book, "Alaska in the Wake of the North Star."

It all started when Shuler followed her physician husband, Dr. Robert Shuler, into the wilderness. He accepted a position with Alaska Native Services, a branch of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, as medical director of the St. Edgecumbe Hospital near the city of Sitka.

Loel Shuler, then working for a Seattle book publisher, finished up what she had to do for that job and then moved to Sitka to be with her husband.

She did not expect to love Alaska, but she soon lost her heart to it.

"It had a profound effect on me," said Shuler, whose Monterey, Calif., cottage is crowded with books and mementos of Alaska. "I hated to leave it. I always thought I would go back."

Shuler found the Far North an intriguing and surprising place. Much of Alaska does not have ice and snow year round - in fact, the summers are intensely, almost surreally gorgeous because of the long days. Flowers and produce abound during that time.

In fact, southeastern Alaska has a mild climate all year long, due to the influence of the Japan current.

As for the Eskimos building igloos ... well, the ones Shuler met had never heard of such a thing.