Hardship Alaska: A Memoir

By Donald Proffit

Haunted by unresolved memories of his Vietnam-era alternative service, Donald Proffit, aka Buzz, reflects on the most formative period of his life. After a ten-day, eventful journey from Allentown, Pennsylvania, to Anchorage, Alaska—marked by car troubles, a freak snow squall, rough encounters, and unexpected kindness—he arrives on Halloween night in 1970, realizing his world will change forever. In Alaska, he works with children in group homes and shelters, lives in a church basement closet while grappling with his own identity, and spends time in an Iñupiaq whaling village north of the Arctic Circle, where the isolation of being an outsider and the strength of community shape his understanding of himself and the world.