In his memoir, LIFE WITH ABBEY: Our Adventures Across the Wilderness of Alaska and Beyond, Jarrett Humphreys chronicles the events of his life in Alaska. After a trip around the 49th state in 2006, he returned to his mundane Texan life with the Alaska bug. Soon he packed up his life and found a canine companion, Abbey, to start afresh in the scenic Alaskan wilderness. For the next decade and a half, with Abbey by his side, Jarrett built multiple homes, made a successful solar power business, found love, and helped his parents move to and from Alaska more than once.
Humphreys adopts a standard recounting of his adventures and life in Alaska for this memoir, rather than a character-driven plot structure. The memoir reads like life itself: uneventful and mundane in places. However, it succeeds at capturing the triumphs and trials of off-grid living. Highlighting the tedious process of keeping his off-grid chalet running, Humphreys frames the experience through exhaustive details of remote life. This includes hauling water (“The snow was so dry that it took all day long just to get a half gallon of water from it") and operating a woodstove (“the wood needs to be cut up into quarters and mixed up with full rounds for the best burn time").
The prose is simple, leaning heavily into topographical descriptions (“The lake was hundreds of feet below us, down a steep embankment that fell away into a boulder field”) that set the scenes well. From making a home out of his first property in Strauseville to settling into the tiny container houses in the small town of Tok, Humphreys takes the reader on a journey that navigates the real problems of life.
He also delves into Alaska's history, bringing up several issues that threaten the integrity of the largest state in America. His criticism of questionable hunting practices and the power companies’ indifference toward much-needed state-wide energy solutions proves as informative as it is a conscious effort at bringing these issues to light.
Contrary to what the title claims, and apart from the author's dedicated efforts to acclimate his canine companion to his constantly changing living situations, Abbey is a fleeting character for a better part of the book. The emotional impact of this dog's presence on him is only marked through her arrival and departure from his life.
Humphreys concludes the work with pictures of key events, places, and people mentioned in the memoir—which helps round out this intimate look into a unique Alaskan life.
In LIFE WITH ABBEY: Our Adventures Across the Wilderness of Alaska and Beyond, Jarrett Humphreys succeeds at compellingly recounting his conquest of off-grid living and exploring the Alaskan wilderness.
~ Maria Zafar for IndieReader