When Seth Kantner burst onto the scene with the publication of Ordinary Wolves, he was widely celebrated as one of the nation's most original and authentic writers.  His story of Cutuk Hawcly, a white boy raised in a sod igloo on the Arctic tundra, offered a heartbreaking vision of a vanishing world, and with it a singular perspective on modern America.

Shopping for Porcupine returns to the setting of Kantner's debut novel with a fascinating account of life on North America's last frontier.  "My memory begins under snow", he writes, recalling his early and longstanding respect for the old Inupiaq ways, cold nights on caribou hides, swimming in the ice floes for wounded waterfowl, and fur-clad travelers stopping with their dog teams for visits.  Bracing and humorous, perceptive and profoundly illuminating, this extraordinary collection of writing and photographs offers an ode to respect -- that oft-forsaken, unromantic quality -- for the land, for animals, and for "something as virtuous as gathering food