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Back in 1972, my boyfriend left me for someone named Pedro. My thinking when that happened was, “He left me. I’ll go as far away as possible to the most inhospitable place on earth that has human habitation and a grocery store. I’ll be utterly miserable and unhappy. That’ll make him sorry.”

That is a classic example of parallel logic. It sounds so right. It’s so close to reality. And it led me to a small Inupiat Eskimo village perched at the very top of the Alaskan Arctic where I spent the next thirty years of my life wondering if Italians were ever really meant to be that cold.

Parallel Logic is the story of how a city girl learned to cope in a town that thought that eating raw whale meat dipped in seal oil was as normal as shaking some aged parmesan on a fine plate of spaghetti. It was a long journey that, despite some bumps and bangs along the way (almost all of which occurred when I didn’t hold the rope tight enough while traveling 40 miles per hour over tundra in a sled being pulled by a snow machine), turned out to be a grand adventure among people who quickly became my very northern family.

Go to http://www.alaskabooksandcalendars.com to order your very own copy of a classic fish out of water tale. It’s funny. It’s charming. It’s exciting. It’s heartbreaking. It’s whatever you want it to be if you’ll please, just buy it. I need the money.

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