Place of the Pretend People: Gifts from a Yup'ik Village

Place of the Pretend People is a vivid, sensitive account of one woman's choice to live and teach in a Yup'ik Eskimo village and later to make her home in Interior Alaska. A fascinating and unusual memoir, Carolyn Kremers' book is both a journey of cultural discovery and a story of spiritual and artistic seeking.The author offers readers an intimate encounter with Yup'ik culture, modern and traditional, as she describes teaching music and English in Tununak, a village tucked along the windswept Bering Sea coast of Western Alaska.

Kremers' experiences in Tununak and elsewhere provide keen insight into the lives and land of the people she grows to love. Through her friendships with Yup'ik people and others, some of the mysteries of life in a challenging northern environment are unraveled, and she begins to understand some of the mysteries within her own heart.