READER GOODIES

Go Deeper in the Alaska Force Series

In the remote islands of Southeast Alaska, a ferry or plane ride away from anything resembling civilization, is the hardy, rugged town of Grizzly Harbor. Like most Alaskans, the citizens of Grizzly Harbor—a place no one can “end up in” because it’s so inaccessible—are suspicious of outsiders who stick around past tourist season, deeply self-reliant to make it through the endless Alaskan winters, and content to aggressively mind their own business.

It’s the perfect place for a man with a name he hasn’t used in years and a past he’s not allowed to discuss, courtesy of the United States military.

Isaac Gentry has more medals and commendations than he can count, but all of them are highly classified. When he comes back home to Grizzly Harbor, he’s not in any way the eighteen year old kid who left for the Marines. But he’s also not ready to settle down into a civilian life that doesn’t fit. And the only thing he has to his name as a regular person is a falling-down old lodge that’s been in his family for generations, out there on the other side of a usually impassable mountain in a place his great- great- grandfather, a con man and a Gold Rush hustler originally from San Francisco, aptly named Fool’s Cove.

It’s a no-brainer to start running different kinds of missions, here on US soil for a change, with skills honed in the Marines and what people like to call Delta Force. And this time, he gets to choose what sorts of problems he spends his time on. It doesn’t take long for his reputation as a solver of unusual problems to spread. Some brothers from the same fires Isaac knew well, along with other individuals of certain temperaments and complementary abilities, come and join him way out in the middle of nowhere.

Grizzly Harbor is far enough away from everything and anything to let soldiers who’ve been in too many hells to count start imagining a different way to live, with enough space to work through things like PTSD however they see fit, out there in the Alaskan wilderness with no witnesses but the snow-capped mountains and the glaciers. And soon enough, Isaac’s inability to adapt to civilian life has transformed into something singular and impressive:

Alaska Force. A light in the dark. Hope for the hopeless.

Assuming, that is, that you can find your way into the Alaskan wilderness in the first place. Then take one of the few ferries or sea planes that flies from Juneau across the inside passage to Grizzly Harbor. And then find the Alaska Force offices, such as they are, over a bitch of a mountain on a dirt track that’s barely a road in the few weeks of the year the pass is open, to a cove surrounded by rock walls and the cold sea—which means you can be sure they’ve seen you coming from miles off. And then, assuming you make it past the bears and the weather and the snipers, convince the meanest, toughest, baddest ex-special forces operatives in the world that they should take you and your problems on.

But if they do? You better believe they’ll solve it. That’s what they do.

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