Preview of Alaska Summary:

Although the characters of Alaska live in times as vast and as varied as the Alaskan terrain (some are not even human), most share one common trait: They have journeyed to and been captured by the Alaskan "Ice Castle."

In many cases, this captivity is literal as well as metaphorical, for Michener's first wanderers are those who cross the Bering Strait from Asia to Alaska during the Earth's several ice ages, and they (or their descendants) are trapped when rising waters cover the land bridge during an interglacial period.

Animal characters, like human ones, encompass both prehistoric and historic times. These include Mastodon, who 385,000 years ago led his cows into Alaska, searching for a more plentiful food source; and valiant Matriarch, whose wiles protect her woolly mammoth herd from fire, but not from the danger of Alaska's first human inhabitants. Perhaps the most interesting of these animal characters...