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A Novel
by Marjorie Kowalski Cole
A thought-provoking statement on the threat to the environment and the attrition of native cultures, Correcting the Landscape is also an old-fashioned novel driven by a beautiful setting and a group of flawed but eminently likable characters.
Gus Traynor is the editor of a small weekly newspaper in Fairbanks, Alaska. His idealism has been consistently tested but remains mostly intact, and he prides himself on his independence of spirit. As he says, "I won't be kept inside any building I don't want to be in." So when big business threatens the awe-inspiring Alaskan wilderness that he holds dear, Gus calls for support from his best friend, an often self-serving developer who helps Gus take on the forces of progress.
As Gus investigates the best ways to preserve the dignity and heritage of his community, he learns more than he's ever known about the region's colorful mix of opportunists, dreamers, and artists. But when a young woman's body turns up mysteriously in a river, he also learns that he may be falling in love with the colleague who is helping him report on the local happenings.
PEN/Bellwether Prize, 2004
"The novel's characters, and their tentative, fully felt interactions in the service of building friendships and love—especially Gus's nervous, endearing, faltering attempts to get closer to Gayle—are at the story's heart, and propel it forward with quiet force." - Publishers Weekly
"Cole's style is subtle but engrossing. She paints the background of her story vividly and populates it with quirky but likable characters. The reader hardly notices that she is making a very strong statement about preserving the land and its people. It is quite a debut." - Booklist
This information about Correcting the Landscape was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Marjorie Kowalski Cole's poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous journals, including Chattahoochee Review and Alaska Quarterly Review. Her essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, American Poetry Review, and Poets & Writers. She lives in Ester, Alaska, with her husband, Pat Lambert.
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