Inside Passage

Green Writers Press May 21, 2021

Keema Waterfield grew up chasing music with her twenty-year-old mother on the Alaskan folk festival circuit, two small siblings in tow. Summers, they traveled the Inside Passage by ferry and car, sharing the family tent with a guitar, cello, and fiddle. Winters, she yearned for a permanent place to land even as her mother, and the music, called her back to the road. Inside Passage follows the young family across rocky Southeast Alaskan shorelines, into marriages, out of town after town, and through the wild waters of the human heart. An unflinching mother-daughter love story that leaves you laughing, weeping, and wanting more.

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"Forget the scads of “reality” television shows that claim to depict typical Alaskan lifestyles in the rugged north. Inside Passage is the real deal, filled with people who are often quirky, sometimes troubled, surprisingly resilient, and unfailingly themselves. In this beautifully written memoir, Keema Waterfield sings her way through the story of growing up with a restless young mother whose artistic aspirations take her and her children from town to town performing at folk festivals, in late-night jams, and on Alaska’s state ferries. Different men come and go in her mother’s life, but hovering in the background is the outsized figure of a pot-dealing, hoarding father who eventually reappears after a years-long absence. Despite experiencing a ruckus of a life…Waterfield has written a clear-eyed, compassionate account of a childhood whose greatest perils and acts of derring-do take place in the wildness of the human heart. The result is a tale that is heartbreaking but never maudlin, funny without being flip, and always, always openhearted about what survival on The Last Frontier truly means."  — Sherry Simpson, author of The Dominion of Bears, and The Accidental Explorer

“With humor and great empathy, Waterfield renders her childhood as the daughter of a peripatetic musician in raw Alaskan country, surrounded by a cast of characters both compelling and flawed. This is a world that offers equal parts uncertain protection and aching beauty, and from that fire Waterfield has forged a shining debut, resonant as song.” — Megan Kruse, author of Call Me Home

“In this captivating debut, Waterfield deftly wrings compassion, resilience, and wry humor from her unconventional, peripatetic childhood. Both tenderly written and fast-paced, Inside Passage is a coming-of-age story that will move through you and leave your heart rearranged.” —Maggie Smith, author of Good Bones and Keep Moving

"Set against the backdrop of beautiful, wild, coastal Alaska, we meet a cast of characters who are lovingly rendered in all of their imperfections. Keema Waterfield has created a stunningly nuanced portrayal of motherhood, both its challenges and its joys. Inside Passage is a sprawling and generous memoir of family, love, and loss. The alchemy that Waterfield has created out of her troubled but magical childhood is exquisite." — Kelly Sundberg, author of Goodbye, Sweet Girl

"Keema Waterfield’s Inside Passage is a beautifully crafted memoir of an uncommon childhood wandering the small towns of coastal Alaska. Waterfield’s prose is vivid, precise, and generous, and her unforgettable story is filled with music, beauty, resilience, and all the love and hurt that constitutes a real life.” — Dinty W. Moore, author of To Hell With It and Between Panic & Desire