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“Seasons of Want and Plenty Book II: Signals”
By Kris Farmen; Blazo House, 2023; 210 pages; $16.99.
Far too little has been written about Russia Alaska, a colony founded for economic purposes that was never truly inhabited by Russians other than employees of the Russian American Company, itself established to supply the fur trade. And even what has been written tends to center on activities along the Panhandle, where the company’s power was based. Its operations along the western coast of Alaska are largely overlooked by historians and novelists alike. This is the mostly untraveled void of literary opportunity that Fairbanks author Kris Farmen has stepped into with his trilogy of simultaneously published books, “Seasons of Want and Plenty.”
The books follow the travails of Ivan Lukin, based on a historical figure who, like many born in the colony and employed by the company in its latter days, was of mixed blood. In his case, one-quarter Russian, one-quarter Koniag, and one-half Déné Athabscan. Lukin’s grandfather was Russian, and his father had risen to esteem and status within the company. Lukin lives forever in his father’s shadow, never seen as having reached his potential.
The first book in the trilogy, “Fireweed,” was set in 1862. It followed Lukin on a journey up the Yukon River to locate a rumored trading settlement of the Hudson’s Bay Company believed to have been established at today’s Fort Yukon and operating illegally on Russian-owned soil.
The second volume, “Signals,” opens three years later with the arrival of an American merchant ship in St. Michael, laden with supplies. The men on the vessel are tasked with erecting a telegraph line to what was then Fort Youcon as part of a larger project to connect the United States with Europe via Canada, then onward through Alaska, beneath the Bering Sea, and across Russia. The project was ultimately abandoned in 1867, but at this novel’s time, it was an ongoing enterprise.
As the Americans reach the shore, their presence furthers rumors flying across the colony of an impending sale of Alaska to the United States. These final years of Russian America, and the transfer of its governance into American hands, provide the time frame that Farmen explores as his stories unfold.
I say stories because, while “Signals” furthers the themes and subplots of “Fireweed,” it’s also a standalone novel in itself. The wisdom of breaking the saga into three volumes published more or less simultaneously rather than as a single book becomes readily apparent. And one can in fact begin the series by reading this one, although I wouldn’t advise it.
Lukin is given the job of assisting the Americans, who many suspect of being spies as well as workmen, in reaching Fort Youcon. The first step is accompanying several of them to Nulato, following the River Kwifpak (the name the Russians used for what is now known as the Yukon). The trip takes place over ice and snow as winter settles in. Here Farmen does what he does so well, conveying a sense of the harsh land and its merciless climate in stark yet poetic words.
“The icy wind screamed down the river’s course like a monster from ancient myth,” he writes, evoking Cormac McCarthy, a subtle but key influence on his writing. Some pages later he adds, “The moon was still up, casting its light over the courtyard. It was nearly full and the monster’s face carved into it could be seen clearly. Both Ursa Major and the dogs on their tethers were silent in the flinty cold and there was no hint of dawn.”
“Flinty cold.” What an image.
The monster’s face on the moon follows Lukin wherever he goes, and is part of the magical realism driving these novels, which otherwise draw from Farmen’s deep research into the era’s history. As a child, Lukin had been gifted the ability to understand and fluently converse in all the languages of the peoples of Russian Alaska. When suddenly he can speak English fluently, he knows the colony’s imminent fate. He’s protected by Tathyaldin, a Tananah shaman whose name must not be spoken. And he’s haunted by dreams of his father’s early life that seem to bring ill omens of Lukin’s future.
Most crucial is Zia, a shapeshifting soul eater Lukin first encountered at age thirteen while a student in the boarding school at New Archangel (Sitka). Emerging from the sea as a nude girl of about age fourteen and remaining ageless ever since, she travels by water and continues to pursue him, materializing at crucial moments and attempting to drag him into the rivers or ocean with her. She is the source of his dreams, and her ultimate purpose and destiny, entwined with Lukin’s, awaits the third volume to be (presumably) revealed.
On the historical side, Farmen lodges these novels in their era, using Russian and Native terms of the time to denote places and people. Unalaklit rather than Unalkleet. Koltog for Kaltag. Nuklukayet is today’s village of Tanana. Among the people dwelling in the region, the Tlingit are called the Kolosh, the Dene Athabscans are referred to as the Dinneh, and the Tanana people the Tananah. Creole, the word for those of mixed Russian and Native heritage, is used on Lukin himself. All of this furthers Farmen’s goal of recreating time and place in vivid terms.
As the story progresses, Lukin’s personal life careens through its straining pieces. His daughter Anastasia by his first and now deceased wife is recently returned from boarding school and becomes entangled with a young American from the ship. Lukin, cuckolded by his second wife, enters into a love triangle of his own, lending his days further complications.
Farmen deftly carries all of these threads across the landscape between St. Michael and Nulato and beyond while navigating through the politics and power struggles of Russian America on its final legs. He continues to excel as a historical novelist, perhaps Alaska’s best. With language and imagination, he recreates a lost age and then infuses it with magic and mystery. “Signals” continues his already impressive winning streak.
(“Meridian,” the third and final volume of “Seasons of Want and Plenty,” will be the subject of a forthcoming review this fall.)
[Book review: A gifted storyteller shares her early Yukon River life]