LISTEN to today's show with Katherine Keith
KATHERINE KEITH
Endurance Racer and Author of the Debut Memoir:
Blackstone Publishing
About the Author
Katherine Keith is a wilderness athlete, experience junkie, spiritual questor, long-distance dog musher, and mother to a fifteen-year-old daughter Amelia and thirty-five dogs, living above the Arctic Circle in Kotzebue, Alaska (pop. 3,266). Professionally, and as a jack-of-all-trades survivalist, she is a small business owner, rural Alaska project director, energy engineer, commercial fisherman, and wellness advocate. Accomplishments such as completing six Ironman triathlons and five 1,000-mile dog sled races form the cornerstone of Katherine’s philosophy of generating grit through overcoming real-time obstacles. A never-ending dreamer, Katherine is currently pursuing climbing the seven tallest summits on every continent as a budding alpinist. EPIC SOLITUDE is her first book. Learn more at http://www.katherinekeith.com/.
Book Summary
Epic Solitude is a moving reflection on a harsh but ultimately inspiring life of endurance dog-racing, motherhood, grief resolution, and spiritual discovery in the Alaskan back country. Divorced at twenty from her high school sweetheart following a youth of abuse, mental illness, and eating disorders, Keith moves from Minnesota to the remote Alaskan wilderness to begin again, only to face the deaths of her newborn daughter, and then her husband the following year. Left to raise her second daughter on her own in the wilderness, Keith finds solace in the athleticism and solitude of traversing the sublime Alaskan tundra as a dog-musher, allowing her to reconnect and recover from past and present traumas as she learns to appreciate the beauty that life offers.
Praise
“A good read for fans of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild.” —Working Mother, 20 Most Anticipated Books of 2020 by Working Mother
“This intense and uplifting treatise on self-exploration celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit.” —Publishers Weekly
“[Katherine Keith] tells her story with brutal honesty, unafraid to ask difficult questions and face the answers, while making clear the deep passion she feels for her sport and her love for her dogs. This is a story of survival and triumph in an unforgiving place, told by someone who understands that despite the solitude, the journey forward is always, somehow, a shared one.” —Booklist
