Defiance Press: Rick, your debut novel Gold Miner’s Daughter is set in 1960s Alaska, and your connection to the state runs incredibly deep. Can you paint a picture of what Alaska was like when you arrived as a child?

Rick Steeby: My folks moved to Alaska in 1954 when I was just 10 months old – Alaska wasn’t even a state yet! By 1960, I was pretty aware of what was going on around me. It was a completely different world from what people imagine Alaska to be today. Virtually everyone in Alaska was from somewhere else, and they had been tied to the military through work or marriage. Veterans of WWII and Korea outnumbered non-veterans by a significant margin.

Alaska in those days was still very much frontier territory transitioning to statehood. We didn’t even have a Medical Examiner’s Office or a state crime lab. There were no instant DNA results – hell, there wasn’t even a DNA test! Complex cases in Alaska tended to drag on from winter to what we called fishing season, also known as construction season. We basically had two seasons: winter and fishing season.

Defiance Press: What was it like growing up in such a unique environment?

Rick Steeby: Not normal, even by Alaskan standards, where most people seemed extraordinary. My memories go back to the time of statehood, and that’s why I chose that era for my stories. The people I knew then could be shown in the context of their time, before technology changed everything.

In Alaska, the stories of our neighbors and their accomplishments made my life seem ordinary, even dull. My home was in Chugiak, Alaska, and the native residents referred to it as the Place of Many Places. Every spring, our neighborhood got together and threw a party for themselves called the Spring Carnival. They got together and entertained each other – I have pictures of my mom in a cancan troupe!

Defiance Press: How does this authentic experience translate into your fiction?

Rick Steeby: A lot of the real stories from my neighbors are in Gold Miner’s Daughter, combined into second and third-level characters, both the good and the bad. Take Dottie, one of my characters – she’s a compilation of strong, attractive, intelligent, and successful women I knew growing up. These were single women who came to Alaska during the construction of the Alcan Highway. Circumstances implied desperate times growing up during the Depression, and they made some desperate, dubious choices in life, but they went on to successful careers.

One of those ladies made no bones about working the highway as a prostitute but retired from her candy business in the ’80s as a multimillionaire with the company she created and sold. These were remarkable women who didn’t take a second seat to anyone.

Defiance Press: The setting of Chicken, Alaska seems perfectly chosen for a remote mystery. What’s the story behind that location?

Rick Steeby: Chicken came from a very personal place. The inspiration for Gold Miner’s Daughter was a friend I met in sixth grade. Her dad would become one of my teachers and a coach in high school, she was a cheerleader, and her family was musical – her father and siblings all played. Most importantly for my story, they owned a gold mine in Chicken.

I needed an entry point for my main character Wyatt to wander into Alaska. Chicken was the closest spot up the road from Dawson City and a logical place. Alaska and the town are tame these days and commercial, but it’s still mostly wilderness. When my folks moved to Alaska in 1954, Chicken was much more unsettled.

Defiance Press: How do you approach the research for historical accuracy?

Rick Steeby: “Write what you know” was my first takeaway about writing fiction. I generally work with places that exist in settings I have some familiarity with. I have friends who were old timers on the Anchorage Police Department who can advise me about the old days, as well as a historian there. Same with the Alaska State Troopers.

For my character’s Texas background, I called a friend who is a historian in Parker County, Texas. Her maiden name was Peoples, and she had relatives who were Texas Rangers, including one who was quite famous. I do a lot of online research for specific details – like weather conditions in Chicken, Alaska, on a specific date. The weather is easy to check for an area in a particular year. Often, I have to stop and Google things like what bodily fluids could be used to identify a suspect in 1961.

Defiance Press: You mentioned the Alaska Railroad plays a role in future stories. Tell us about that connection.

Rick Steeby: My future stories are related to the Alaska Railroad. It ran right through our neighborhood, and I walked miles of tracks, hung out in the rail yard at Birchwood. I had a general idea of the history – the ARR was the only federally owned railroad in America when I grew up. Now it’s state owned.

There are a couple of good historians on Facebook, part of the Alaska Railroad Fans group. I’ll rely on them and a couple of friends who worked on the railroad and are retired. It’s another example of writing what you know – I lived it, so I can write it authentically.

Defiance Press: How do you balance the romantic nostalgia for old Alaska with the harsh realities of frontier life?

Rick Steeby: That’s a great question because Alaska wasn’t all beautiful sunsets and majestic wildlife. It was hard living, especially for law enforcement. We’re talking about a time when the state government and state law enforcement were still transitioning from federal territory to statehood. My character Wyatt faces situations where there’s no backup coming, no fancy forensics, and sometimes no law at all except what a man carries with him.

I want to portray how things really played out when Alaskans were still figuring out how to be a state. There’s romance in that independence and self-reliance, but there’s also real danger and isolation. In the book, the residents of the Chicken vicinity – more than a forty-mile radius of town – get together to celebrate the Fourth of July in the wake of a tragedy. That’s how it really was – people looked out for each other because they had to.

Defiance Press: What do you hope readers take away about Alaska from your books?

Rick Steeby: Two things. First, I want them entertained by the Alaska – the state and people – I knew as a kid. If I could take people on the cruise and rail tour of Alaska, I would. It covers as much of Alaska as possible in just two weeks. I lived there for 40 years, had a boat and an airplane, and only saw less than half. You cannot make that trip without coming away with a sense of awe and feeling insignificant in the face of Mother Nature.

Second, I want them to understand that Alaska shaped a particular kind of person – people with perseverance who stepped up when they had to. My dad was my hero, supported us kids through everything, and was a volunteer fireman. He went out and saved lives for free in his spare time. That’s the Alaska spirit I’m trying to capture – ordinary people doing extraordinary things because that’s what the situation demanded.

Discover the authentic Alaska of the 1960s in “Gold Miner’s Daughter” – coming soon from Defiance Press and Publishing.