The City Beneath the Snow: Stories (Alaska Literary Series) - Tapa dura

"Cole's characters live, work, and struggle in interior Alaska, and she depicts life here with a keen eye and with compassion. We see the daughter of a Fairbanks junkyard owner, struggling with her isolation. We meet a bartender at Circle Hot Springs who's also a certified nurse's assistant at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital and a newcomer to Fairbanks who falls in love with the aurora. We watch a marriage strained nearly to breaking after a young daughter drowns in the slough. We see an alcohol abuse counselor and a pilot who flies her around in the bush trying to find their way after a brief sexual encounter. These are the inner lives, revealed with care and with skill, the true material of good literature." (Peggy Shumaker, Writer Laureate of Alaska) "I am so impressed with Marjorie Kowalski Cole's craft, her wisdom, the way she can hold whole worlds of relationship and conflict in the palm of her hand as a writer." (Barbara Kingsolver, on A Spell on the Water)"

The final collection of stories by award-winning writer Marjorie Kowalski Cole, "The City Beneath the Snow" is a portrait of contemporary Alaskans, their interactions, and their foibles. These stories reveal the moral decisions that lurk at unexpected corners in daily life as the characters confront a world at once magical and ordinary, joy-filled and tragic. Together, they give the reader an intimate portrait of a people and place more often portrayed through wilderness specials and reality adventure shows.