Disappearance: A Map: A Meditation on Death and Loss in the High Latitudes
by Sheila Nickerson
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Description
"I live in a place where people disappear," begins Sheila Nickerson in this visionary quest for the missing in the vast and often stormy stretches of Alaska. As Nickerson, on the brink of retirement, sorts through the detritus of an overstuffed office, she becomes obsessed with the disappearance of a colleague whose Cessna 340A was lost in the area known as Alaska's Bermuda Triangle. His vanishing leads her back to earlier searches - for the lost Franklin expedition and for the elusive glory show more of the North Pole. Setting down her memories as markers, Nickerson travels forward with current occurrences of disappearances - of hikers and climbers, tourists and adventurers, hunters and fishermen, the murdered and unidentified - along with losses of another order: the great shamans, the languages and cultures of the Native peoples, and the natural resources of Alaska, including the oil flowing through the eight-hundred-mile pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. From these musings, a vivid map emerges of uncharted territories and lives that touch through time, coincidence, or the hope of a message buried deep beneath a cairn. In a writing style marked by its grace as well as its gravity, Disappearance: A Map is a wise and knowing evocation that understands that the maps we make of our lives are ultimately charted through the compass points of the heart. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Trying to stop reading this book was like trying to take an afternoon nap but there's a dog barking outside. It didn't engage me and I'd be dying to put it down but once in a while there'd be a good line or two and thusly I got dragged back in.
Am never going to get through this one. I read the first few chapters, jumped to the end and read the last couple. Jumped back to the middle, read some of that and it's just not for me.
Nickerson humanizes disapperances in a way Nancy Grace dehumanizes them. Perhaps that's why I've read it so slowly. There's nothing like someone or something that can have a civilizing effect on you.
Jul 28, 2010Catalan
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Books about/set in Alaska
51 works; 12 members
Author Information
14+ Works 227 Members
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Das gefrorene Meer
- Original title
- Disappearance
- Original publication date
- 1996
- Important places
- Alaska, USA
- Dedication*
- Für Martin, Helen, Tom und Sam, Kapitän und Mannschaft
- First words*
- Ich lebe in einem Land, wo Menschen verschwinden.
- Last words*
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Es gibt nur den Schnee und die Stille im Sanktuarium des rechtweisenden Nordens.
- Original language*
- Amerikanisch
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir, Travel, History
- DDC/MDS
- 979.805 — History & geography History of North America Great Basin and Pacific Slope region of United States Alaska
- LCC
- PS3564 .I288 .Z47 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Individual authors 1961-
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 129
- Popularity
- 253,740
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.38)
- Languages
- English, German
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 1
