South to Alaska: A True Story of Courage and Survival from the Heartland of America to the Heart of a Dream

Born in the dusty heart of Oklahoma in 1916, ten-year-old Melvin dreams of living in Alaska. Nearly fifty year later, he builds a 47-foot boat in his Arkansas backyard, launches it on the Arkansas River, and cruises it to Alaska by way of the Panama Canal. Melvin has never been south of the United States border and has never been on a boat in the open ocean."Learn by doing," he says.Follow Melvin as he cruises along the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico where, in 1973, he begins an amazing solitary journey along the Caribbean coasts of Mexico and Central America, through the Panama Canal, then into the Pacific Ocean to Alaska. Plagued by mechanical problems, international fraud, violent ocean storms, threats of foreign jail, illness and loneliness, Melvin fears a deadly end before reaching the place of his dreams and returning to the woman he loves.A true story of courage, endurance and survival, South to Alaska chronicles Melvin's 10,000-mile journey through a watery world he knows little about, to a world he cannot forget.