"When 9 year-old Tara Neilson, parents, and 4 young siblings moved out to an abandoned cannery near Wrangell in 1980, they were resettling a piece of Alaska history. Canneries were the engines that drove the coastal economy for a good century, and when refrigeration allowed canneries to move into town, many, essentially whole little villages in the wilderness, were abandoned overnight. Tara’s dad worked at a distant logging camp, boated home for weekends, Mom did what she could. But as Tara puts it, the kids turned feral. Lucky for us, young Tara kept a journal: of adventures, of new skills learned, some small: how to make Walkman batteries last longer. But some critical: how to safely drive a small boat full of siblings through rough waters, how to deal with bears on the trail home. But her book is also a reflection on place: the aura of the cannery that surrounded them, the children wondering about the immigrants from many countries who spent so much of their lives there. Neilson completes the circle by finding and sharing accounts of the lives of some of those workers. All in all Raised in Ruins is a rich look at unique Alaskan lives with a fascinating bit of history thrown in as well!" ― Joe Upton, author Alaska Blues

"Describes an upbringing in which the realities and challenges of subsistence living coincided with memorable adventures and natural wonder." ― Library Journal

"Tara Neilson reflects on a childhood spent in the wilderness, preparing for the apocalypse." ― Literary Hub

"If anyone doubts that children are resilient, capable of handling a harsh environment and sometimes fragile family circumstances with their love for the outdoors and family intact, this book proves that they are ― or at least can be. . . While Raised in Ruins is her first book, we can hope for much more from this attentive, compassionate, imaginative, resourceful and very skillful writer. " ― Anchorage Daily News

"Unique Childhood: A Memoir of Escape and Home. As a kid living the frontier life in the ruins of an old cannery in southeast Alaska with her family, Tara Neilson discovered the joys of roaming free, the hard work of homeschooling, and the challenges of existing outside of society's lines. Raised in Ruins takes readers on a journey only Neilson can tell, through adventures with siblings, her parents' relationships to work and wilderness, surviving bear encounters, and how the author formed her unique perception of time. Sprinkled throughout with bits of regional and cannery history, this memoir paints a picture of a time and place forever." ― Alaska Magazine

★ Amazon Editors Pick - Best Biographies & Memoirs!
★ Featured recommendation by the renowned literary platform "LitHub"! LitHub titled it "Every Day of My Childhood Was a Post-Apocalyptic Survival Adventure", telling and recommending the amazing story of a family venturing into the wilderness and establishing a wilderness community.
★ This is an extraordinary documentary of pioneers, with an original and unique story that is warm and touching. It explores the desolate land abandoned by human society and wraps it in an incredible family adventure. Infinite love, kindness, ability, dedication, perseverance and imagination interact and flow, and this unknown history is finally repositioned.
★ This is a wild and exciting wilderness family memoir! Author Tara Nelson successfully presents a unique way of growing up, depicting the intense and turbulent yet unexpectedly fulfilling lifestyle in the Alaskan wilderness.
★ This is a post-apocalyptic reality adventure full of sensory imagery! It will take readers through time and space to embrace a refreshing and genuine way of perceiving the world, and a new way of thinking to reconnect with the environment, people, the present and the past, and everything.

An extraordinary memoir of a woman’s unconventional childhood growing up in the Alaskan wilderness, on the grounds where the burned remains of a cannery once stood.

In the 1980s the Neilson family moved out on a floathouse to the remote site of a former cannery in Southeast Alaska that had burned to the ground before statehood. They were miles away from any neighbors, surrounded on all sides by wolves, bears and other wildlife, entering the world of subsistence living in an uninviting land of dangerous weather and storms; yet the Neilsons were able to make themselves a home where few others would have found possible. Led by a jack-of-all-trades handyman for a father and a mother who was afraid of everything in the wilderness, Tara and her four siblings cleared the rough terrain to build atop the blackened, rusty ruins a new way of life that was completely their own.

From a young age, Tara learned that anything was possible, so long as one can imagine it and then make it happen. When given her mother’s impractical design of a six-bedroom house, her father picked up his tools and crafted it into a reality. To reach the closest community, they built a wooden boat sixteen feet long for the perilous journey on the water. The Alaska wilds required independence and self-sufficiency from the family, and in return it provided a natural landscape that inspired romantic passion and unlimited dreams. With endless forest on one side and the wide ocean on the other, Tara embraced the lonesomeness of the burned cannery ruins that she called home, and often wondered what it once was with its people inside, their stories, where they went, and what happened to them.

Beautifully poignant and completely original, Raised in Ruins escapes into the wilderness to discover a piece of Alaskan history wrapped in an incredible family adventure fueled by love, strength, hard work, endurance, and boundless imagination.

Tara Nelson
Tara Neilson is a writer and editor best known for her popular blog Alaska For Real, which she created in response to the Alaska Bush People. A column based on her blog appeared in Capital City Weekly and the Juneau Empire. She was also a professional freelance book editor and has been published in Alaska Magazine, Writer’s Digest, Northwest Boat & Travel, and more. Tara lives off the grid in a floathouse in Alaska.