My One Square Inch of Alaska PDF
Preview My One Square Inch of Alaska
A PLUME BOOK MY ONE SQUARE INCH OF ALASKA SHARON SHORT is the recipient of a 2011 Montgomery County (Ohio) Arts & Cultural District Literary Artist Fellowship and a 2012 Ohio Arts Council individual artist’s grant. She is “Literary Life” columnist for the Dayton Daily News and directs the renowned Antioch Writers’ Workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Short lives in Ohio with her husband and is the mother of two daughters in college. Visit her at www.sharonshort.com. My One Square Inch of Alaska A NOVEL Sharon Short A PLUME BOOK PLUME Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa Penguin China, B7 Jaiming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. First Printing, February 2013 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyright © Sharon Short, 2013 All rights reserved REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Short, Sharon Gwyn. My one square inch of Alaska : a novel / Sharon Short. p. cm. ISBN: 978-1-101-60285-0 1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Families—Ohio—Fiction. 3. Sick children—Fiction. 4. Alaska—History—1867-1959—Fiction. 5. Road fiction. 6. Bildungsromans. I. Title. PS3569.H594M9 2013 813’.54—dc23 2012032249 Printed in the United States of America Set in Janson Text LT Std Designed by Leonard Telesca Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. PUBLISHER’S NOTE This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 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ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON To David, the love of my life My One Square Inch of Alaska Table of Contents About the Author Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Epilogue Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Later, MayJune would say that the biggest turns in life come when you’re paying the least attention, making small choices you don’t yet know will change everything. MayJune was always saying things like that—corny and peculiar and true, all at once. But, of course, I hadn’t met her when I found Mama’s clothes stuffed in suitcases with mothballs and made my first small choice: Instead of snapping the suitcases shut and forgetting my discovery like I knew I should, I counted the pieces. Thirty-eight. Dresses, skirts, blouses, pants, but mostly dresses—fine dresses, afternoon- tea dresses, party dresses, even costumey dresses with feathers and sequins. But not life-in-Groverton dresses. Mama’s wedding dress, a white satin and lace and mother-of-pearl-button confection, filled one suitcase all by itself. There were also hats and shoes and a few purses, but I didn’t count them. It was October 1946 when I found Mama’s clothes. I was ten years old. Making my first trip to the forbidden basement, I cradled armloads of home- canned green beans and corn and tomatoes, fall harvest gifts from neighbor women who, even with the war over, still had victory gardens and made it their business to worry about us. Fearful of slipping and dropping the jars, I stared past my arms at each step mottled with dull blue paint, remembering Mama’s warning that it was too dark and dirty down there for Will and me. Fear crept in when the wobbly bottom step threw me off balance. In that moment between almost falling and not falling, I saw the suitcases lined up against the wall, in the shadowy corner behind the Singer sewing machine. I didn’t fall. My hands trembled as I opened the big trunk first. The Mama we knew dressed in dowdy housedresses or bathrobes, occasionally some denim pants and a loose blouse, or a simple dress.
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