First Wilderness
by Sam Keith
Written by Sam Keith, author of the Alaskan classic One Man’s Wilderness, this memoir shares the fascinating story of how Sam and Dick Proenneke first met and discovered a friendship to last a lifetime.
After serving as a Marine during WWII and attending Cornell on the GI Bill, Sam Keith set out for Alaska in 1952. He landed at the Adak Naval base on Kodiak, where he befriended a group of likeminded men, including Dick Proenneke, who shared a love of the outdoors, hard work, and self-reliance. Through letters to his father back home, Sam chronicled their remarkable hunting and fishing adventures in pre-statehood Alaska before he went back to the Lower 48 in 1955.
In 1970, Sam returned to Alaska to visit Dick at his cabin at Twin Lakes. Out of the visit came One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey, based on Dick’s journals and photography about life in the untamed Alaskan wilds. Sam and Dick remained lifelong friends until they both passed away, in 2003, within 30 days of each other.
Ten years later, Sam’s son-in-law, children’s book author/ illustrator Brian Lies, discovered an unpublished manuscript by Sam in an archive box in the family’s garage. Now presented with a brand-new design, color photographs, and excerpts from journals and letters, this memoir follows the journey of Sam’s enthralling adventure in the wild beauty of North America’s last frontier.
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