Book review: ‘The North Face of Summer’ offers a compassionate look at an Alaska conflict

“The North Face of Summer: An Alaskan Novel”

By Russell Tabbert; Cirque Press, 2025; 504 pages; $20.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter, under powers granted by the Antiquities Act, declared National Monument status for 56 million acres of federal land in Alaska. His act triggered massive protests across the still-young state, and pitted resource interests against preservationist organizations in a bitter struggle over what the term “public lands” means and how such territories should be managed.

One of the regions fought over most fiercely was the Kantishna Mining District, adjacent to the eastern border of what was then Mount McKinley National Park. Home to several active mines that had been worked for 75 years, it became a flashpoint in the battle between those who had long earned their living from the ground itself, and the emerging environmentalist viewpoint that public lands belong to all Americans and should not be used for private gain.

A firestorm resulted in Alaska and raged throughout the summer of 1979, particularly in the Interior, where mining had long been an economic mainstay. Carter was burned in effigy, and opponents of his move quickly began defying federal laws on the newly preserved regions. For proponents of resource development, the lands had been locked up. For those who supported leaving the lands untouched by industrialism, they were locked open.

It’s into these contentious events that Russell Tabbert steps in his recent novel “The North Face of Summer.” In this story, mostly set in Kantishna, Tabbert explores the conflict through richly drawn characters, presenting this history from several sides, seeking not to pit good against evil, but instead to find how basically decent human beings with widely divergent views can, through the complexities of their own histories and experiences, come to near blows when their individual values run head-on into each other.

The book opens on an airliner bound for Alaska where Natalie Thorsen, fresh out of high school, is being sent north from Illinois by her overbearing mother to spend the summer with her miner uncle Bill Dunham. Beset by a drunken roughneck, she receives aid from Kent McDonald, born and raised in Fairbanks and on his way home from college.

McDonald, we quickly learn, has been hired by the Wilderness Forever Coalition to spend the summer in Denali covertly photographing mines in Kantishna, looking for violations that can be used against their operators.

One of those mine claimants is Bill, who collects Natalie in Fairbanks and takes her south to stay for the season.

Also key to the story, which has far too many critical characters to list in a brief review, are Lars Peterson and his wife, Elvira, who have a nearby claim to Bill’s. Bill and Lars, longtime friends, are taking separate approaches to the arrival of National Park Service overseers of their operations. Bill is opting to cooperate with Park Service and work as best he can within its mandates. Lars, along with most miners in the district, chooses to defy the government and continue business as usual.

From there the primary drama in the book plays out. Slowly but steadily, officials with Park Service begin asserting themselves, seeking to enforce federal regulations. Each step is matched by an equally steady increase in reaction from Lars and others who want none of it.

Caught in the middle are Bill and Natalie.

Bill, willing to bend to whatever extent allows him to keep working his claim, understands the resentment of his fellow miners, but is willing to adapt to new circumstances.

Stuck in an even deeper bind is Natalie, who genuinely adores Bill and Elvira, while at the same time is falling into a summer romance with Kent. Both she and Bill can see the good in others found on both sides of the conflict, and both want to find some middle ground that will prevent things from taking a turn toward violence.

The standoff does turn physical in the book’s central scene, set at a Fourth of July picnic at one of the tourist lodges in Kantishna, where tensions between the two sides come to a head and Kent runs into trouble. From there, any hope for common ground is all but lost.

Tabbert has done something here that a lot of authors would fail to accomplish. He’s crafted characters across the spectrum that readers will sympathize with and come to like quite quickly.

Those who have read the novels of Edward Abbey, who explored similar themes, will recall that he created straw men out of miners and others drawing their livelihood from the land, leaving damage in their wake. And though often an uproariously funny writer, Abbey failed to ascribe much humanity to his villains.

For Tabbert, the miners aren’t villains. This is most poignantly illustrated by Lars, who emerges as the most fascinating and conflicted character in the book. Well into their 60s, he and Elvira have lost a son in Vietnam, while their daughter, a lesbian, is estranged from her father and living in San Francisco with her partner. Add the sectioning off of a mine claim he’s worked for decades, and we find an aging man living far from a rapidly changing American culture, yet feeling assailed by it. Tabbert doesn’t endorse Lars’s sometimes bigoted views, but he does thoughtfully lead readers into understanding how the man became who he is. No easy task, but the author pulls it off.

With each chapter, Tabbert shifts viewpoints from one character to the next, exploring their inner narratives and thus, instead of hectoring readers toward one conclusion, forcing them to understand the events of 1979 as a human drama in which lines of judgement aren’t to be simply drawn.

History tells us where this story will end beyond the book’s closure. But what “The North Face of Summer” offers is a compassionate look at the people inescapably pulled into what happened. It’s an unusually mature book for such a fraught topic, but by choosing the difficult path of broadmindedly exploring a volatile time still contentiously fought over, Tabbert serves a monumental piece of Alaska’s history well.

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