![]() To be honest, read enough of him, some stories blur together. That’s a footnote in the life of Gary Paulsen. “Once, in the middle of the night in bad weather where the Columbia River comes slashing out to the sea, I had been caught up in dodging half-sunken logs pushed out of the river into open water - many boats have been sunk by them over the years - and I accidentally moved between what I found to be a large male orca and his family pod.” In an author’s note, Paulsen describes this setting as a “mythical frontier, inspired by the North American coast I traveled as well as the Norwegian coast of my ancestors.” Though it reads quite close to a fable or ancient Nordic legend, Paulsen then mentions that, oh, most of what happens to the boy in this, it also happened to him. It is about a Nordic boy who escapes a cholera outbreak in a wooden canoe, setting off for the Pacific Northwest. “Northwind” reads in an elemental, back-to-basics register. But he finished one last book, which plays like the culminating words of a life stuffed with incident. ![]() He died of cardiac arrest last fall at his home in New Mexico. ![]()
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