Louis and Fanny

Bears, volcanoes, earthquakes, fire, ice, shipwreck and tuberculosis were realities of life in coastal Alaska a century ago. Seward was two years old in 1905 when Louis and Fanny Pedersen stepped off the boat with four children and a tent -- their home for both summer and winter. They were Methodist missionaries sent to fight alcohol and prostitution in the rough railroad camp, and build civic institutions. Skagway was a Gold Rush boom town on the way down in 1913 when they reached their next post. They threw everything they had at the battle against vice, championing schools, libraries, literacy and churches. "Be useful," Louis advised a relative. "Then you should be happy." Alaska left its mark on them, and they left their mark on it. What they started on the Last Frontier is still unfolding in this wild, raw, exhilarating place, and in the lives of those whose ancestors they touched. * Includes previously unpublished transcripts of interviews with three Pedersen children and 38 photographs, some of which have never before been published.