Outside Passage : A Memoir of an Alaskan Childhood

When Julia Scully was seven years old, her father committed suicide, and she and her sister were sent to an orphanage. Two years later, emotionally damaged by the isolation and brutality of the orphanage, the girls followed their mother to the near-wilderness of the gold-mining territory north of Nome, Alaska, where she had leased a roadhouse in the tiny settlement of Taylor. Julia had no idea what to expect when she arrived, but to her surprise, she found a healing power in the stark beauty of the vast tundra. Later, she reveled in the boisterous, chaotic boomtown atmosphere that prevailed when thousands of American troops descended on Nome at the outbreak of World War II.__Outside Passage__ is a lyrical and affecting memoir of those years, simultaneously an emotional account of a young girl's first steps into adulthood and a unique portrait of a vanished frontier life.

In Outside Passage Julia Scully regathers the memories of her childhood - the isolated far western Alaskan frontier before and during World War II. They begin with her immigrant parents' efforts to make a living during the Depression in California and the Pacific Northwest. Faced with illness and despair, Julia's father commits suicide when she is seven, and she and her older sister, Lillian, discover his body. Julia's mother then leaves her daughters in a San Francisco orphanage and goes to Alaska, searching for an economic toehold at the edge of the continent. Eventually, her mother buys a roadhouse - the only public place in Taylor, Alaska, it serves the settlement's small-time gold miners - and at last sends for her daughters to rejoin her. Despite the cold and isolation of Alaska, there are small blessings for Julia to count: secretive summer wildflowers and berries on the seemingly barren landscape, and the wild animals - reindeer, fox, and wolves - that roam the endless tundra. The young Julia serves whiskey to the rough customers who play poker at the ramshackle roadhouse, pans gold with a beguiling prospector, kisses her first boyfriend - one of the soldiers ordered to Alaska to defend against a possible Japanese invasion.

Time Magazine

...[A] simple reminder of the immense power of a child's love, which can last through terrible neglect.

When Julia Scully was seven years old, her father committed suicide, and she and her sister were sent to an orphanage. Two years later, emotionally damaged by the isolation and brutality of the orphanage, the girls followed their mother to the near-wilderness of the gold-mining territory north of Nome, Alaska, where she had leased a roadhouse in the tiny settlement of Taylor. Julia had no idea what to expect when she arrived, but to her surprise, she found a healing power in the stark beauty of the vast tundra. Later, she reveled in the boisterous, chaotic boomtown atmosphere that prevailed when thousands of American troops descended on Nome at the outbreak of World War II. Outside Passage is a lyrical and affecting memoir of those years, simultaneously an emotional account of a young girl's first steps into adulthood and a unique portrait of a vanished frontier life. A memoir in which Julia Scully recalls the time she spent living in an orphanage with her sister following her father's suicide, and discusses how her life changed when her mother leased a roadhouse and moved them to the tiny settlement of Taylor, Alaska, which quickly became a boomtown when thousands of American troops were sent there following the outbreak of World War II