Glacier Gal

Gerri Barton has lived a dutiful life, never straying far from her home in South Carolina. Her graduation from college (the first of her family to do so) is marred by a scornful, cheating boyfriend who dismisses her as unadventurous. There is a kernel of truth to this, she realizes, but it has more to do with the family finances than any lack of interest. Her parents, hearing of this, scraped together the money to provide Gerri with a low-budget adventure: a bus trip across the country to spend a few weeks with her brother, a soldier stationed near Seattle. In this year of 1969, such a trip is not without danger for an unaccompanied young black woman, but she makes it to her brother's Army base unscathed. Her adventure is cut tragically short, however, by his sudden deployment overseas. Stubbornly determined to extend her adventure somehow, Gerri fixes on the idea of seeing a glacier. To this end, and unknown to her parents, she takes a side trip to Juneau, Alaska. There, her inexperience catches up with her and she runs out of money. Her search for a temporary job leads her to a fisherman, Sven Halvorsen. Depending upon whom you talk to, he is either a nice man with a tragic life-or a monster. This job leads her to further adventures-and dangers-beyond anything that she had dreamed. Sven lives a quiet life in a town where many still blame him for his wife's death. Against his better judgment, he hires a persistent, but inexperienced, Black youth as a deckhand. What he got was an attraction which was utterly unexpected. Pursuing this attraction took him to places that he never imagined. He yearns to make a life with her. Can he convince Gerri of this? And can he convince her to uproot her life in the face of hostility from her family and friends?