Chapter 23, Booze, Chapter 24, Galena and Chapter 25, Reflection Summary and Analysis

In Chapter 23, Sidney injures his eye while chopping firewood, and it has to be removed and replaced with a glass eye. He talks about Prohibition. Beginning with contact with white men, alcohol is a part of life in rural Alaska, and throughout Prohibition, people make liquor with stills, though bad liquor can cause blindness or death. Jimmy and Sidney run a still, selling alcohol. Sidney's drinking increases until in the 1940s, he is drinking excessively. Left alone in his trapline after a binge, he sees a pink elephant. Only when his wife Angela has to go to the hospital with tuberculosis, a plague that has killed Sidney's sister Ada, all fourteen of Hog River Johnny's children, five of Weaselheart's six children, and many more, does Sidney quit drinking, in...