Emma Stevens invites you to the launch of Dancing on the Tundra at 5.30 pm on Wednesday 1 March at Fairfield House, 48 Van Diemen Street, Nelson. Drinks and nibbles provided.

Dancing on the Tundra is the final book in Emma’s trilogy of memoirs about living and loving in the Alaskan wilderness. As the book opens, she is adjusting to ‘city life’ in a small hub city in southwestern Alaska with the man she married after an online romance blossomed into love. Emma’s husband is now the superintendent of nine Eskimo village schools. As bicultural coordinator, Emma flies to remote village schools to work with local teachers, and organises a Spring Festival, uniting villages in a huge dance celebration.

After a particularly perilous flight, the couple decides to relocate to Chevak, a remote Cup’ik Eskimo village in western Alaska where Emma is amazed to be greeted by a Cup’ik elder holding a M?ori tokotoko  who tells her, “We’ve been waiting for you.”

However living in the bush presents many challenges, and along with the demands of managing a busy school, the couple must deal with the daily realities of this isolated environment, where temperatures can plummet to minus eighty below freezing, and access to the outside world depends on the weather.

When health crises make living far from emergency medical care a life-threatening risk, Emma and her husband must eventually decide whether to leave their beloved bush Alaska and return to New Zealand.

Dancing on the Tundra, along with the previous books Walking on Ice and Nesting on the Nushagak, will be available for sale at the launch for $32.99 each, in association with Page & Blackmore Booksellers of Nelson.