Four Quarters of Light

Brian Keenan's fascination with Alaska began as a small boy choosing his first library book in a Belfast school. The book was Jack London's wondrousCall of the Wild. And it has permeated Keenan's life ever since. A short visit to Fairbanks several years ago was enough to seal his connection with the place and he resolved to return. Last year he did so with a head full of questions about its inspiring landscape and heart informed with his own love of the desolate and barren places of the world. In the course of a journey that takes him through four geographical quarters from snowmelt in May to snowfall in September, he discovers a land as fantastical as a fairytale but whose vastness has a very peculiar type of allure.