Empire's Edge : American Society in Nome, Alaska, 1898-1934
ISBN: 9781602231528
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / University of Alaska Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: History;

In 1898, Nome, Alaska, burst into the American consciousness when one of the largest gold strikes in the world occurred on its shores. Over the next ten years, Nome's population exploded as both men and women came north to seek their fortunes. Closer to Siberia than to New York, Nome's citizens created their own version of small-town America on the northern frontier. Less than 150 miles from the Arctic Circle, they weathered the Great War and the diphtheria epidemic of 1925 as well as floods, fires, and the Great Depression. They enlivened the Alaska winters with pastimes such as high-school basketball and social clubs. Empire's Edge is the story of how ordinary Americans made a life on the edge of a continent--a life both ordinary and extraordinary.

Texas playwright Preston Jones was one of the more important figures who, in the 1970s, helped to break New York's grip on the American theater. His acting, directing, and playwriting career at the Dallas Theatre Center was one part of a national mosaic of regional theatres that were successfully rebelling against the commercial offerings of Broadway. His best known work, A Texas Trilogy (1976), received rave reviews from audiences in Dallas and in Washington, D.C., before moving on to other major cities. Jones received national attention in September 1976 with the repertory presentation of A Texas Trilogy on Broadway.

Set in Bradleyville, a small town in West Texas, the three plays show the effects of time on the people who are caught there. The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia (1976) is a comic masterpiece depicting the final throes of an outmoded and racist fraternal order. Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander (1977) is the epic story of a woman who sacrifices her dreams of faraway places for the realities of life in a small town.The Oldest Living Graduate (1976) depicts a cantankerous veteran of World War I who resents growing old and who resists the loss of ideals to expediency.

Jones's other plays also focus on the theme of time. A Place on the Magdalena Flats (1976) explores the growing discord between a hard-working rancher and his misfit younger brother. Santa Fe Sunshine (1977) is a warm-hearted comedy about an untalented sculptor who believes that at long last he has created a great work of art. Jones's final play, Remember, focuses on the experiences of a single day in the life of an aging actor. This unpublished work, which raises philosophical questions about mortality, opened just over a month before the playwright's own untimely death at the age of 43.

During his career, Preston Jones received the Rockefeller Foundation Playwright-in-Residence Fellowship (1975), the Golden Apple Award from CueCue (1976), the Outer Critics Circle Award (1977), and the Drama Desk Award (1977). His plays continue to be popular in community, university, and regional theaters.

(Bowker Author Biography)


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