Boom Town Boy

By Jack de Yonge

Book Overview

This is the witty, ironic, and deliciously outspoken coming-of-age memoir of Jack de Yonge set in Fairbanks, Alaska -- a once thriving little mining town slowly dying in the remote center of the vast territory in 1934. As Jack's dad liked say, no matter what direction you went out of town, you soon arrived in Nowhere.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1935347063
• ISBN13: 9781935347064
• Release Date: July 2013
• Publisher: Epicenter Press (WA)
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Growing Up in Fairbanks

My wife and I grew up in Fairbanks a generation later than Jack. Some of what he wrote in Boom Town Boy was very familiar, but other parts gave us new insights into a community where we spent nearly the first 40 years of our lives. We grew up in a generally thriving community in the 1950s-60s, so his description of Fairbanks as a dying town in the 1930s was particularly interesting. There are many hallmarks of a gifted author, but I'd have to think one of them would be to provide even the folks who have lived in the same community with a fresh perspective on their hometown. Jack certainly does that with Boom Town Boy. The book also leaves the reader wanting more, another mark of a good story. Along the way it manages to convey some important lessons learned while growing up. Whether you grew up in Fairbanks or some other small town, the images Jack presents should help bring back memories of adolescent years and adventures. I heartily recommend this book.

A Major Contribution To Americana

Jack is one of a kind! I first read him when he was a columnist for the Seattle P.I. His pithy, down-to-earth style is even stronger in his book about growing up in Fairbanks, Alaska before and during WWII. He lived a rugged, no holds barred life and lived to write about it in vivid prose that is a real contribution to Alaskan literature. It is a must read for anyone who loves unique places and odd pieces of history told from a personal perspective or just loves a good true story. Bravo, Jack!

An instant classic of Alaskana

It doesn't matter if you've never been to Fairbanks, Alaska -- Jack de Yonge's coming-of-age memoir "Boom Town Boy" will resonate with anyone who remembers growing up in a dead-end town where kids had to create their own adventure (and nearly always succeeded). Even if you have been to Fairbanks, de Yonge still takes the reader on a tour full of surprises. He remembers people long gone and cabins no longer standing, yet the reader who knows where to look can still walk through town today and see the wall of the old courthouse where de Yonge and his friends used to throw marbles, or the river landing where they swam on long summer days. He writes of floods, fistfights, and the first fish he ever caught, a triumph that anyone with an appreciation for the outdoors will recognize and savor. "Boom Town Boy" is not pure sentimentality, however. Like every childhood worth remembering (and memoir worth reading), de Yonge's contains moments of sadness and loss. The Fairbanks of the 1930s and 40s is gone. That this book brings a small piece of it back is truly a gift.

Story of growth in the last frontier

Time engenders lively memories of life's pleasant occurences while distorting recall of others more unsettling. The window of time oft becomes a little dusty and blurred so that we may forgive or forget mistakes of judgement or deed. Yet it is the totality of our histories that grant the foundation of the present and future along with inborn chemistries. Jack de Yonge and his memoir "Boom Town Boy" provide a reflective lesson as to how to peer through and profit from time's window. "Boom Town Boy" is a splendid work of substance and style recounting prominent experiences and memorable people who formed the core of the author's person, values, and sensibilities. He vividly captures the prevailing spirits and pressures of a faraway place, recounting epochs of boom and bust, triumph and turmoil, pleasure and sadness, poverty and wealth, good and bad times as reflected in the Great Depression and world war -- and the inescapable lure of and insatiable lust for gold. Each chapter is a provocative tale of coming of age in the "lost" frontier. The story told by de Yonge is poignant, marked by pathos of a tough environment and of hearty people, some pretty weird, many of whom survived by quile and grit, along with a little luck and some villany. Others, in the glare of harsh reality, did not survive. This is more than biography or even a memoir. It is about life in a rough and daunting setting. Mr. de Yonge speaks with eloquence and humor of a uniquely tough time and way of life in an uncompromising world. What comes through his book is the deep sense that he loved the land, its manifold challanges, its beauty, and the freedom. Change has taken place in Fairbanks since de Yonge grew up there. Some might call this progress. Others are less sure. In any case now much of the frontier life has slipped away. He says in his Epilogue: "We had lived on a wrinkle of time's flow."

Paradise Lost in Alaska

Boomtown Boy is for anyone who grew up in a remote small town - or would like to know what that felt like. It helps if your memory goes back to the Great Depression years, but younger readers can visit that quaint time and stare in wonder. Every reader will find its details moving and its honesty refreshing - or maybe sometimes jolting - as de Yonge takes us through the sexual, religious, pugilistic, educational and outdoor rituals of a boy growing up in the thirties in a cold place that Time had passed by. This is Winesburg, Ohio, set in Fairbanks, Alaska, and the characters are just as hard to forget.