My One Square Inch of Alaska

225 Pages·2013·1.09 MB·English

by  Short Sharon

A PLUME BOOK
MY ONE SQUARE INCH OF ALASKA
SHARON SHORT is the recipient of a 2011 Montgomery County (Ohio) Arts &
Cultural District Literary Artist Fellowship and a 2012 Ohio Arts Council
individual artist’s grant. She is “Literary Life” columnist for the Dayton Daily
News and directs the renowned Antioch Writers’ Workshop in Yellow Springs,
Ohio. Short lives in Ohio with her husband and is the mother of two daughters in
college. Visit her at www.sharonshort.com.
My One Square
Inch of Alaska
A NOVEL
Sharon Short
A PLUME BOOK
PLUME
Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York
10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a
division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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Beijing 100020, China Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, February 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © Sharon Short, 2013
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION
DATA Short, Sharon Gwyn.
My one square inch of Alaska : a novel / Sharon Short.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-101-60285-0
1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Families—Ohio—Fiction.
3. Sick children—Fiction. 4. Alaska—History—1867-1959—Fiction.
5. Road fiction. 6. Bildungsromans. I. Title.
PS3569.H594M9 2013
813’.54—dc23
2012032249
Printed in the United States of America Set in Janson Text LT Std
Designed by Leonard Telesca
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the
copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC., 375 HUDSON
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ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON
To David, the love of my life
My One Square
Inch of Alaska
Table of Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Later, MayJune would say that the biggest turns in life come when you’re
paying the least attention, making small choices you don’t yet know will
change everything.
MayJune was always saying things like that—corny and peculiar and true, all
at once.
But, of course, I hadn’t met her when I found Mama’s clothes stuffed in
suitcases with mothballs and made my first small choice: Instead of snapping the
suitcases shut and forgetting my discovery like I knew I should, I counted the
pieces.
Thirty-eight.
Dresses, skirts, blouses, pants, but mostly dresses—fine dresses, afternoon-
tea dresses, party dresses, even costumey dresses with feathers and sequins. But
not life-in-Groverton dresses.
Mama’s wedding dress, a white satin and lace and mother-of-pearl-button
confection, filled one suitcase all by itself.
There were also hats and shoes and a few purses, but I didn’t count them.
It was October 1946 when I found Mama’s clothes. I was ten years old.
Making my first trip to the forbidden basement, I cradled armloads of home-
canned green beans and corn and tomatoes, fall harvest gifts from neighbor
women who, even with the war over, still had victory gardens and made it their
business to worry about us.
Fearful of slipping and dropping the jars, I stared past my arms at each step
mottled with dull blue paint, remembering Mama’s warning that it was too dark
and dirty down there for Will and me. Fear crept in when the wobbly bottom
step threw me off balance. In that moment between almost falling and not
falling, I saw the suitcases lined up against the wall, in the shadowy corner
behind the Singer sewing machine.
I didn’t fall.
My hands trembled as I opened the big trunk first. The Mama we knew
dressed in dowdy housedresses or bathrobes, occasionally some denim pants and
a loose blouse, or a simple dress.