...I was ready to put it all behind me and never think of it again," Plumb said, adding he was ready to move to a strange town and change his name. But while in a hospital in Chicago, Plumb agreed to do the opposite and told his story at a press...

...fjords. The abandoned military structures and other oddities that inspired Whittier's unofficial biography, "The Strangest Town in Alaska," could disappear, too. "If I were to write a book, I would probably call it 'Whittier: Alaska's...

...abstract," and "obscure." Spoken like a man whose forebears never suffered the stark humiliation of arriving in a strange town and having to ask around for a hotel that would take them or a restaurant that would serve them. And frankly, if anyone...

...grandfather immigrated to the United States from Sweden in the late 1800s. He started school partway through the year in a strange town, in a foreign country, in a language he didn't know. It was close to Valentine's Day and somehow the ritual of...