BLOG
Behind-the-scenes stories from the real Alaska that inspired UNTAMED COAST, and from the winding path of writing and publishing the novel.
-
History vs. FIction
The place called Radioville in UNTAMED COAST was real. In the 1920s and ‘30s, a retired U.S. Army Signal Corps sergeant named Joseph T. Bauer (fictionalized in the book as Joe Baxter) ran a small communications outpost on a rocky island off the west coast of Chichagof, maintaining the only radio link between the remote
-
How Boating in Alaska Led to a Book Deal
My wife and I run a company called Slowboat, leading boating expeditions up the Inside Passage to Southeast Alaska. Back in 2016, while exploring the outside of Chichagof Island with friends, we met a guy in Rose’s Bar in Pelican who told us about a place called “Radioville”—a tiny island where, in the 1930s, a
-
Finding Radioville
We left beautiful Klag Bay, Alaska on a Thursday morning, (August 4, 2016). In Pelican the day prior, a regular named Bill at Rose’s Bar told us about a place called Radioville, on a small unnamed island on the outside of Chichagof Island. Bill kinda sorta pointed it out on the chart for us, and