Review
…an inviting mixture of history and memoir, with many an engaging anecdote about Alaska before and immediately after statehood. Tremblay loves Bush Alaska and loved his work, especially flying, for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He brings to life an Alaska that now is only a memory.
--Michael Carey, Anchorage Daily News
Ray can spin a yarn with the best of them...and make you believe it because it's all true. ---Jay Hammond, Governor of Alaska 1974 - 1982.
About the Author
After retiring to Anchorage, Ray Tremblay stayed active in the summer with commercial fishing for halibut and sportfishing for salmon. In winters, he was busy traveling and writing. He and his wife, Elsie, were married for fifty years and had six children and eleven grandchildren. Sadly, Ray passed away in August 2004, one month before the release of ON PATROL.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
“I was a full-time professional trapper in interior Alaska, a life I had dreamed of as a boy. Trapping for a living was a demanding way of life, and it sometimes became very lonely. It was not exactly the romantic life I had envisioned; nevertheless, it suited me. I loved the wilderness and the independent life, as well as the challenge of wresting a living from the land. I felt I was in control of my life.
This way of life finally came to an end, however, because of forces over which I had no control. In the spring of 1952, a scant three years after I took to the trapline trails, fur prices dropped to an all-time low. As I took my winter’s catch of marten, mink, otter, wolverine, and wolves to sell to fur-buyers in Fairbanks, I became downhearted with the prices I was offered for a hard winter’s work.”
