Mostly Water - Paperback
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Mostly Water: Essays from Alaska and the American Outback
Mostly Water presents a collection of linked memoir essays that traverse the remote landscapes of Alaska's arctic and subarctic river towns to the horse trails of eastern Oregon. Author Mary Odden crafts a literary journey through the American outback, where human inhabitants are woven into histories as meandering as the northern rivers themselves.
A Literary Exploration of Remote American Landscapes
This essay collection invites readers into seldom-seen places through vivid character portraits and authentic regional experiences. From fiddle dances to gatherings described as "half potlatch and half potluck," Odden captures the cultural fabric of Alaska's Copper River Valley and Oregon's eastern territories. The narrative weaves together personal memoir with observations of contemporary life in America's most remote regions.
About the Essays
The linked essays in Mostly Water document how twenty-first century events ripple through isolated communities, balanced against the enduring presence of music, love, and the natural world. Odden's background as an aviation dispatcher, village teen counselor, writing teacher, and newspaper publisher/editor informs her perspective on these distinctive American landscapes and their inhabitants.
Recognition and Literary Merit
The essays collected in this volume earned Mary Odden a 2015 Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Award. Her work has appeared in prestigious literary journals including the Georgia Review, Northwest Review, Nimrod, the Alaska Quarterly Review, and the anthology Under Northern Lights.
Paperback Details
Published by Boreal Books in June 2020, this paperback edition brings together Odden's most significant essays from a lifetime spent in Alaska's backcountry. The collection reflects her journey from eastern Oregon through forest fire work in Alaska to her current home in Nelchina, Alaska, where she lives with her husband.
Mary Odden's essays have appeared in the Georgia Review, Northwest Review, Nimrod, the Alaska Quarterly Review, and Under Northern Lights, an anthology of contemporary Alaska art and writing. Born in eastern Oregon, she traveled north to do forest fire work in Alaska. She studied writing at the University of Montana and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She has worked as an aviation dispatcher, village teen counselor, writing teacher, and as publisher/editor of a small newspaper in Alaska's Copper River Valley. In 2015, she received a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Award for the essays gathered in Mostly Water. She lives with her husband in Nelchina, Alaska.
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