Leavetaking is an Alaska-based essay collection propelled by movements of departure and return. Corinna Cook asks: What can coming and going reveal about place? About how a place calls to us? About heeding that call? And might wandering serve not only to map new places but also to map the most familiar ones, like home? Departures and returns in these essays derive in large part from the narrator’s personal experiences of cross-continental travel by pickup truck and by airplane, human-powered expedition-style travel by kayak, regional travel by ferry, and her daily or local travel on foot. But the movement of coming and going at the heart of this collection exceeds the physical, for these essays are also intent on understanding spiritual and psychological pulses of proximity and distance in human connections to other people, their stories, and their homes.

The Yukon Ice Patch Project reveals ancient lives. A road through the boreal forest reads like a map of climate upheaval. Those houses with broken doorknobs—a legacy of government regulation over Indigenous life. Corinna Cook, who was born white on Áak’w Kwáan Tlingit land in Juneau, Alaska, wrestles with the past and future into Canada’s Yukon Territory. With writing that blends research and reverie, her essays ask how we might come into right relations with our most difficult, shared histories. How can we carry the past together, in a good way, as the land melts? The answers—elusive as they are—carry global resonance, taking shape through a deeply personal lens combined with careful study of local arts, artifacts, maps, and the land we depend on.