Road Song

October 1, 1990
In 1969, at the age of six, the author and her three siblings moved from Los Angeles to Alaska with their parents, who longed to live in the wilderness. Beset by poverty and hardship during the first winter, they were also victims of tragedy when a neighbor's sled dog attacked Kusz and tore away one side of her face, including an eye. She recounts the story of the years that followed, when she underwent reconstructive surgery, became a teenage mother and with her family struggled to eke out an existence in a harsh and difficult environment. They endured the long Alaskan winters in a trailer, built a house and determinedly remained together as a family. Eschewing sentimentality and self-pity, Kusz paints a moving portrait of herself and her funny and heroic family in this engrossing, poetically written memoir.

Welcome to Alaska, the Last Frontier says the sign at the border. And frontier it is, even in the 1960's when young Natalie's family, all six of them, are struggling to survive in a trailer with the thermometer registering 60 below. Since the events in this harrowing childhood memoir are described out of sequence, it would be easier to read the book than to listen to these tapes. But that would mean missing Barbara Caruso's fine narration . . . a great loss. Especially memorable: her lovely singing of one of the family's road songs at a moment of deep sadness. J.C. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine