From Publishers Weekly In 15 stories， Alaska looms as a presence that variously is vast and claustrophobic， dangerous and freeing， exhilarating and depressing. A long-time resident frets over and envies a newcomer whose hunger for wild and solitude defies common sense. Elsewhere， an aging hippy tries to woo his estranged daughter with moosemeat pizza and bleached pelican skull knickknacks， but she's a creature of civilization's comforts， committed to Walkman music and double-scoop ice-cream sundaes. Her husband is away drilling for oil and a resentful wife must cope alone with an erupting volcano; a woman leaves the bush for Anchorage and abandons a friend in the process; a miserly recluse wins the lottery; and a thief discovers his girlfriend can kill without remorse. The prose here is pleasantly understated， the tenor of Alaskan existence often is transmitted ("You don't live in a small Alaskan town for the job you can get; you do whatever job you can in order to be able to live in such a place.") and many descriptions， such as shrimp processing in an Alaskan cannery， are authentically rendered. But hampered by obvious and trite plotting， the collection doesn't rise above merely competent. A commercial fisherman in Alaska， Lord wrote The Compass Inside Ourselves. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information， Inc. From Library Journal The cold， the majesty， the isolation， the escape from a world that is closing in too tightly--it is all here in this haunting collection of short stories set in Alaska. Alaska is known for its characters， and Lord presents quite a variety in these stories of survival. In the title story， a long-time resident watches as a newcomer is overcome by a sense of isolation she is unprepared for. In "Volcano，" a woman homesteads alone two weeks of every four while her husband works at oil drilling; though she must contend with fires， storms， and even a volcano erupting during her days alone， her husband cannot appreciate the hardship of her life. A newspaper reporter breaks out of his boring routine in Baltimore to travel to Anchorage for the Iditarod race after interviewing "The Lady with the Sled Dog." As Eric， a wanna-be Alaskan， says in "Snowblind，" "Some of us need Alaska， even if it's only in our minds." Lord's stories deserve a wide readership.- Debbie Tucker， Cin cinnati Tech Coll.， OhioCopyright 1991 Reed Business Information， Inc.