Northern Lights, Frozen Nights

Russell Annabel was best known for his Alaskan action-adventure tales. In 1920, at the tender age of 15, he left his family in Washington State and boarded a steamer for Alaska. Over the next 35 years he trapped, prospected, hunted and fished this great land, frequently in the company of venerable old Tex Cobb, the sourdough that taught him wilderness survival. When Rusty died in 1979, he left behind a permanent record of his adventures, something few illiterate prospectors or sourdoughs were capable of. His Technicolor descriptions of North America's most spectacular game land captivated the imagination of anyone lucky enough to read them. Author Jeff Davis spent two years researching the life and times of Russell Annabel. In 1998, a startling discovery was made: old, dusty boxes that contained Rusty's Alaskan files. Stored in a friend's garage in Anchorage, those old stories, newspaper clippings and notes for future stories had been collecting dust for half a century. Organizing the notes and outlines became an intriguing challenge. If enough material could be pieced together to form another Annabel tale, this would be the first unpublished Annabel material to appear in print in two decades. Amazingly, not one, but ten complete stories were pieced together, ranging from pure Annabel outdoor tales to WWII stories that came out of his war correspondent experience.