The theme park was five years in development and touted worldwide as a golden destination for foreign tourists. It would offer everything a tourist desired to experience in Alaska-snow-capped mountain ranges, a gold rush town, whale watching, salmon fishing, an aquarium with dolphin and orca acts, an eagle sanctuary, and glacier viewing. Cruise ships would dock adjacent to a recreated gold mining town where tourists could enjoy all of the wonders of Alaska at one location. But the most compelling experiences for tourists would be the predators of Alaska-Glacier World's massive, wildlife enclosures with five-star wildlife attractions, like the Alaskan brown bear, cougar, wolves, wolverines, caribou and musk ox-all in their natural habitats. But Glacier World had a darker side. Local residents were miffed that over $500 million was being spent to develop an old cannery as a destination resort without hardly any local hires. In the fall of 2019, just before Glacier World was scheduled to open, people died under peculiar circumstances and government authorities were apprehensive about reports of missing cargo in the Gulf of Alaska. A thousand miles to the south on the coast of Washington state, Earl Armstrong, the forester for an Indian tribe, was missing something too-one hundred thousand board feet of premium lumber, which his freight forwarder informed him-had vanished. It could cost him his job and destroy his career. When attempting to trace his lost shipment in an era of computerized, global transactions and ultimately in the ice and snowbound mountains surrounding Glacier World in SE Alaska, Earl and his friends are exposed to danger from more than one kind of predator, some desperate and some just hungry. For readers who love novels that use Native American legends to add to their intrigue, like Tony Hillerman in his Joe Leaphorn novels, or Craig Johnson in his Longmire series, you will like Fredrick Cooper's Earl Armstrong Novels. You will enjoy his earlier novels Riders of the Tides and Destruction Island.
About the Author: Fredrick Cooper realized he wanted to be a novelist after more than 30 years of writing engineering and technical reports and journal articles. His debut novel, Riders of the Tides, and his second, Destruction Island, are set in the coastal communities of SW Washington State where he was born. Like the characters in his novels, he was raised in close association with the timber and fishing industries and the sea in the Pacific Northwest and Southeast Alaska. Prior to obtaining a doctorate in civil engineering and pursuing a professional career, he worked as a road surveyor, longshoreman, commercial fisherman, cannery worker, and even as a technician and news announcer in a cable television station in a small community in Alaska. He is an enrolled member of a Northwest Indian Tribe and, in addition to his creative story-telling, is a wood carver specializing in Native American objects such as canoe paddles and ceremonial items. He is a member of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association and the Willamette Writers. He and his wife and their Standard Schnauzer live in Portland, Oregon where he is working on his fourth novel.