Download South to Alaska: A True Story of Courage and Survival from America's Heartland to the Heart of a Dream AudioBook Free
A true history of courage and success, South to Alaska bears listeners from the heartland of America to the previous frontier... the hard way. Blessed in the dusty center of Oklahoma in 1916, 10-year-old Melvin recognizes a photograph of a cabin in the Alaska wilderness in his fourth-grade geography e book and dreams of living there. Practically 50 years later he creates a 47-ft . boat in his Arkansas backyard, launches it on the Arkansas River, and cruises 10,000 miles to Alaska by way of the Panama Canal. Melvin hasn't been south of the United Claims/Mexico border and hasn't been over a boat in the wild sea. "Learn by doing", he says. In South to Alaska, publisher Nancy Owens Barnes takes listeners on two journeys. Using one, listeners follow a young boy's aspiration that begins in a one-room, Oklahoma schoolhouse in 1926, and ends ages down the road an island in southeast Alaska. On the other, listeners become a traveler aboard the Red Dog as it cruises along the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers to the Gulf coast of florida where, in 1973, Melvin begins a solo journey along the Caribbean coasts of Mexico and Central America, through the Panama Canal, then in to the Pacific Sea to Alaska. Plagued by mechanised problems, international scam, violent sea storms, hazards of foreign jail, disease and loneliness, Melvin worries a dangerous end before achieving the place of his dreams and time for the woman he loves. South to Alaska chronicles Melvin's 10,000-mile journey through the dangerous world he is aware little about, to a world he cannot forget.
