Book: Surviving the Island of Grace by Leslie Leyland Fileds

A Memoir of Alaska

The island of grace is off Kodiak Island. Leslie marries Duncan whose family has fished for a living in these waters. They marry and she moves to Alaska, to the island. This is her story of that life.

On June 15 at 0800, fishing season began which actually was pulling nets and picking salmon from them.

"This is the only break we will have tonight. Duncan and I are sitting together as we eat, our rubberized and reptilian legs pressing against each other on the seat. Duncan leans over and gives me a kiss, leaving a wet spot on my face where his nose dripped. He's got a couple of scales on his cheek, and a smudge of fish blood on his forehead. I've got something dried on my jawline; my gloves are a blend of blood and hurry. I'm not feeling romantic. He's yelled at me three times already this put-out."

They lives are mingled with Duncan's parents and his brothers and their families. Leslie's own childhood was often sad and poignant. She grew up in the Northeast. Her father seldom lived with them, and her mother rehabbed houses to earn a living for Leslie and her five siblings: "Outside we wore the veneer of at the middle and upper class: my mother drive a black Mercedes; our dog was not a spaniel or a mutt but a Russian wolfhound; we lived in a gorgeous-appearing house. Yet, the reality: the Mercedes was six years old, haggled down to less than $3,000; we had only purebred dogs as pets in case we needed to sell them; our house was below freezing five months of the year; our food was painfully doled out; and we spent much of our time, when our friends were playing and going to movies, out in the fields and woods, in the house, working." Once a house was sold, they moved to another.

She and Duncan build a home on the island and stay through the winter instead of moving to Kodiak or Larsen Bay as her in-laws do. Leslie writes both of her external and internal worlds…of the ocean and tides, of the long days that were either full of light or full of darkness, of the onerous and endless task of hauling water, of salmon, nets and boats, of hazardous passages to the mainland and always of the wild beauty that is Alaska. And of her sometimes ambivalent feelings and traitorous thoughts, of her fatigue and resentment, of her joy and contentment, of her acceptance and gratefulness.

They eventually have five children and continue living and fishing in the summer on Bear Island.

While I did enjoy the book and Leslie writes well, for me there was something about the her that didn't set quite right. Perhaps because she respected the private lives of her husband's family, she seldom wrote much about them. The stories revolved around her, although how can I criticize her self-absorption in the unconventional life she choose….one that most of us would never ever consider…It isn't a gentle tale and because of that, the telling of it isn't either. The telling of it is like Alaska itself, an entity demanding notice and wonder and acceptance.