Parallel Destinies, An Alaskan Odyssey

by Judy Ferguson

Overview

Parallel Destinies is the North's history in a microcosm, from wilderness to modernization. Through Montenegrin fur trader John Hajdukovich, Swedish roadhouse owner Rika Wallen and Interior Natives, Alaska evolves from trail to highway, from runners to telegraph and telephone. Researched in Montenegro, Sweden and Alaska, Parallel Destinies has archival photographs on every page as well as maps. Rika's Roadhouse, a lodge built in Big Delta in 1914, was the hub of civilization between Fairbanks and the Canadian border between 1904 and 1942. John Hajdukovich, a Montenegrin, and the builder of Rika's, was the law, a trader and the life support system to the Natives of the Upper Tanana River. Hajdukovich was a force behind the 1930 Tetlin Indian Reserve and was the Interior's best-known big game guide. Although never a successful miner, Hajdukovich prophesied there were enough minerals in the Goodpaster (home today of Pogo gold mine) and Tanana valleys to support generations of residents. A sort of John Muir and Johnny Appleseed personality, Hajdukovich was a father of today's Tanana River Valley economy. A lone female, Rika Wallen kept a wilderness roadhouse, home base to Hajdukovich, which she ran 1917-1950s. She depended on the rabbits she shot, her garden and fields, apiary and dairy. Parallel Destinies is the parallel stories of the immigrants and Alaska Natives, a young land growing up.
Endorsements:
Wonderful collection of historical photographs. Parallel Destinies portrays an excellent, personal spectrum through different personalities, a vital documentation of real life.
Professor Tamara Lincoln, Bibliographer and Rare Books Curator, University of Alaska, Rasmuson Library
Wonderful photographic reproductions with charming accounts from the Gold Rush’s crossroads of Alaska.
Anna Plager, State of Alaska, Division of Parks, Fairbanks, Alaska

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Product Details

BN ID:	2940150719347
Publisher:	Voice of Alaska Press
Publication date:	10/15/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	141
Sales rank:	798,729
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Author, Fairbanks Daily-News Miner and Anchorage Daily News freelance columnist, and publisher Judy Ferguson first came to Alaska in 1965, five years after statehood. Educated at the University of Oklahoma and the University of California Los Angeles, she moved to Big Delta in 1968 where she met and married her woodsman and state fire warden husband, Reb Ferguson. They moved up the Tanana River where they raised their three children with boat and dog sled access only.
In 1975 during the building of the Trans-Alaska pipeline, before the construction of high schools in the Bush, the Fergusons canoed the Yukon River.
Three years later, the Fergusons kayaked the Kobuk River before the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.
During 1996 to 2004 when Judy began writing and traveling the state, she met elders whom she interviewed for the Anchorage Daily News: Tlingit, Tsimshian, Haida, Aleut/Unangan, Alutiiq, Yup’ik, Iñupiaq, and Athabascan, Windows of the Land.
Judy has published seven books. In late 2015-16, expect Windows to the Land, An Alaska Native Story, Vol. II: the Iditarod and Alaska River Trails, ISBN: 9780971604452.
Judy is the author of Windows to the Land, An Alaska Native Story, Volume I: Alaska Native Land Claims Trailblazers, ISBN: 9780971604483; Bridges to Statehood, ISBN 978-0-9716044-9-0; Parallel Destinies, ISBN: 0-9716044-0-1 and Blue Hills, ISBN: 0-9716044-1-X and children’s books, Alaska’s Secret Door, ISBN: 978-0-9716044-2-1; Alaska’s Little Chief, ISBN: 978-0-9716044-3-8; Alaska’s First People, ISBN 978-0-9716044-4-5, and Windows to the Land, An Alaska Native Story Vol. II: the Iditarod and Alaska River Trails, ISBN: 978-0-9716044-5-2.

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