Warning: Spoilers spoken here.
There were some eloquent pleas for the glacier and the photo album in the comments, but the cabin has it. It was the cabin her father built to prove up on his homestead, it was where Stephan brought Zoya as his wife, it was where Kate was born, it was where she kept running away to when Emaa tried to move her into town after her parents’ deaths, it’s where Abel trusted her enough to go when she was a kid and not hurt herself, it’s where she ran to after she was nearly killed on the job in Anchorage, it’s where Jack found her again at the beginning of A Cold Day for Murder, and it’s where Jim began his search for her at the beginning of Midnight Come Again. Oh yeah, it’s all about the cabin.
Kate’s cabin was based on an actual cabin I stayed in when I was very young. I have googled madly to find something similar. Think this one with an extra story for a loft for a bedroom.
And this one would be something like the one the Park rats built for her in the same location and that she lives in today.
Those windows face south, with the Quilak Mountains on Kate’s left as she looks out and the Kanuyaq River valley unfolding down to an occasional glint of Prince William Sound in front of her. Zoya Creek, named for her mother, curls around the cabin to flow into the larger river.
Fun fact: I have lived in a one-room cabin with an outhouse out back. In winter all you wanted was to get your business done and get back into the warm and I won’t even talk about when the pile of solid waste got so high and froze so solid it bumped you in the butt when you sat down. There was an oil stove for heating and cooking. There was running water, which froze up during more than one winter, and electricity generated by the town power plant which only occasionally went out, thank goodness. Baths were in a galvanized steel tub, and when the water froze we loaded the tub with snow and waited for it to melt. The water never got more than lukewarm but by god we were clean and that was all that mattered to my mother.
I never take hot and cold running water or electricity for granted, and until I die will believe that as much crap as I have put Kate through she would forgive me anything for getting her out of that cabin and into her house.
the 23rd Kate Shugak novel
coming April 11, 2023
order your signed hardcover here
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Chatter Kate Shugak The History of Kate Shugak in 22 Objects Uncategorized a grave denied Kate Shugak No Fixed Line