Willow author publishes homesteading novel

WASILLA - So you’re driving around near your homestead on your ATV and you spot something moving.

All of a sudden that thing turns into a glowing ball of light. An experienced woodsman, you draw your pistol as you dismount to approach the thing.

And that’s when you realize — it’s just a porcupine. Something spooked it, so the animal put up its quills and the sun hit those translucent spikes just right to make the creature appear otherworldly.

You holster your gun, and then the creature calms down and its quills flatten.

“It just turned into a poor old porkie again,” said Warren Troy, who relates that episode in his just-completed work of fiction, “Trails: Living in the Alaska Wilderness.”

Like a lot of the book, the porcupine episode comes from Troy’s own life.

“Most of the things in there actually happened. Not all of them,” he said.

He said this porcupine snippet happened just as he described it. Other episodes in the book he changed.

“In fiction, you can change names and places, which is sometimes a good idea,” Troy said.

“Trails” tells the story of Denny Caraway, a man burned out on his corporate job and his life in Reno, Nev.

“Jeez, Denny, why don’t you just go live all alone in the woods somewhere, maybe Alaska,” one of his exasperated coworkers tells him in the book’s introduction. “That should fit you to a T! A few weeks of that and you’ll gladly come back to what you’ve got here!”

And so Denny does. He builds himself a cabin by hand and just as he’s finishing, the troubles begin. His neighbor, the book’s main antagonist, drives a bulldozer past his cabin and Denny finds out there’s a lodge going in next door.

“The whole thing’s going to change,” Troy said.

That’s when the conflict kicks into high gear and Denny has to figure out what he’s going to do.

“Nobody dies,” Troy said. “Comes close, but nobody dies.”

Troy is a relatively recent Anchorage transplant to Willow. He and his wife had been building a cabin to retire in up there for years and just this winter got it fixed up enough to move in. He loves it there.

“Alaska’s made of characters, but they got their share,” he said.

Troy’s own life story has a few elements that might be familiar to Alaskans. Born in New York state, he lived in Syracuse and then on Long Island until he was 13 years old.

Then he moved to California and, from there, further north and west periodically until, in 1989, he wound up in Alaska.

In the far north he reconnected with a woman he’d known and they got married. Then they spent five years as, in Troy’s words, “full-time homesteaders” in the Kachemak Bay area.

At various points in his life he’s been a mechanic, proprietor of a cigar shop, a gun dealer and ammunition re-loader, and a mailman in 1960s-era San Francisco. He’s also had hobbies like painting and sculpting pottery.

“Writing is sticking with me,” he said.

Troy said “Trails” is actually his second book, but his first was self-published. He called it “Jester: Memoirs of a Retired Hippy.” He started writing it when he worked at a gun shop in Anchorage. The owner was kind enough to let him sell copies at the store. Everyone who bought it, loved it, Troy said.

“Maybe I’ve got a knack,” he remembers thinking.

Now that he’s got a second book out, he said he’s started polishing his old Jester manuscript. He might re-release it someday. He’s also got a couple more book ideas he’s kicking around.

For this second book he’s signed on with the Anchorage outfit Publication Consultants. The cover art is a photo he took of the trail near his homestead.

Troy said his own experience homesteading ended like it does for a lot of homesteaders — priorities change. For some it’s that the kids need civilizing. For others, the lifestyle loses its allure.

“With me, it turned out my parents got very sick,” he said.

So he moved to Nevada with his wife. By the time he got back up to Alaska, his back was so bad they couldn’t go back to the homestead.

“I still miss it,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Book signings for “Trails: Living in the Alaska Wilderness” by Warren Troy.

WHEN AND WHERE: Nov. 25-27 at the ReadAlaska Book Fair at the Anchorage Museum, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday; Dec. 1 from 5 to 8 p.m. at Gallos Mexican Restaurant at Dimond and Old Seward in Anchorage; Dec. 15 at the library in the Willow Community Center.

COST: Admission is free to all three events.