Duane Bell was thirteen years old when his dad decided to leave his wife and five kids to fend for themselves in Modesto, California. The mother took a job waitressing while Duane’s uncle, Bill Bell, went about finding his older brother’s whereabouts. Eventually, Bill discovered that his brother Gilbert had moved to the southeastern tip of Alaska, to the commercial fishing community of Wrangell. So, in the summer of 1972, Bill (then 36 years old) drove his 1936 Dodge coupe from Modesto up to Wrangell, a distance of more than 2,000 miles over occasionally unfriendly terrain. This was a journey which...