Becoming Frozen: Memoir of a First Year in Alaska - Paperback

by Jill Homer (Author)

Jill Homer was just another naive young woman who followed a man to the Last Frontier - but it was Alaska that won her heart. This memoir is a love story about the wonderful, humorous, and sometimes harrowing experiences that await when a woman throws her heart to the wind just to see where it lands. After taking a job at a weekly newspaper in Homer, Alaska, Jill and her partner forge a new life in a town where artists and sport fishermen drive the local economy, grizzly bears roam through back yards, social outings feature death-defying ski trips or kayaking rough seas in freezing rain, and business attire means wearing three sweaters to an unheated office. As Jill adapts to Homer's idiosyncrasies, she finds her own quirky hobby - riding a bike on snow. Despite having little in the way of an athletic background or talent, Jill signs up for a hundred-mile race across frozen wilderness. As the harsh Alaskan winter sets in, she launches a tenacious training routine that takes her far out of her comfort zone. Here, under the Northern Lights, battling exhaustion and extreme cold, Jill discovers the heart of Alaska. And there's no going back.

Author Biography

Jill Homer grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, and graduated from the University of Utah in 2000. She began her career working in community weekly and daily newspapers before moving to Homer, Alaska, in 2005. She never viewed herself as an athlete, but she was looking for a unique challenge, and the esoteric sport of snow biking fit that description. A couple of years worth of (mainly mis-)adventures landed her in the Iditarod Trail Invitational, a 350-mile bicycle race across the frozen wilderness of Alaska, in 2008. The unforgettable experience was the genesis of her first book, Ghost Trails: Journeys Through A Lifetime. She continues to balance an unquenchable thirst for adventure with a freelance career in writing and editing at her current location in Los Altos, California.