Land of the Radioactive Midnight Sun: A Cheechako's First Year in Alaska - Hardcover

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First, a definition: cheechako is a term from the Alaskan gold rush; it describes someone who is completely new to the territory, a tenderfoot, a babe in the woods. That handily sums up the author, a U.S. Air Force public affairs officer from New York, newly arrived for a tour of duty in Alaska. This entertaining book chronicles his first year--the period, traditionally, during which a cheechako either becomes an Alaskan, or bails out, or worse. There's a lot of fun here: the author plays rugby on ice and baseball at sunny midnight. There's some danger, too: a Jaguar aircraft crashes not too far from Flynn's base. And there are plenty of laughs, as the author milks the fish-out-of-water premise for all it's worth. Although he's neither as funny nor as linguistically accomplished a writer as Bill Bryson, Flynn can play in the same ballpark, and he keeps the pace fast and the story lively. David Pitt
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For one year in the late 1990s, Flynn was posted to Eileson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska, as a public affairs officer, one of the "desk weenies" assigned to put a good face on unpopular military activities, like environmentally hazardous combat flying exercises and radioactivity-fueled facilities on native lands. His personal goal was to transform himself from "cheechako," or greenhorn Lower 48-er, into a "real Alaskan." While he approached his duties spinning bad news for the military with seasoned skepticism-noting his lies in parentheses for the reader-the challenge of becoming a real Alaskan seemed to involve his manhood and was therefore more serious. Commenting on underdressed (for the weather) rugby players, he concludes, "they're all just afraid of being called a wimp. Any guy can appreciate that." He treats readers to several bloody and drunken rugby matches in 30-below weather, plus some attempts at dogsledding, salmon and halibut fishing, moose eating and gold panning. Flynn liberally seasons this virile menu with complaints about the difficult guy/gal ratio and more than a little finger-pointing at the gals who look like guys. Ultimately, Flynn decides being a real Alaskan is less about endurance and more about attitude (e.g., if you're freezing, go get a jacket or stop sitting in the snow). In the last pages, Flynn, like many of his "real Alaskan" friends, leaves Alaska for more urban settings-after all, as Flynn puts it, Manhattan's so much better at "pizza and women."
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