The Road to Courage

"Roy Taylor's account of his family's faith, joy, arduous work, setbacks, strengths, and skills will lift readers' hearts. This is the most endearing memoir you will ever read." -LAURA KALPAKIAN , novelist and author of Memory into Memoir "The Road to Courage offers readers a warm hug." -JES HART STONE , author of Turbulent Waters: A Pacific Northwest Thriller, www.jeshartstone.com "More daring than the Ingalls clan, the Taylor family will stay in your heart forever." -SEÁN THOMAS DWYER , author of A Quest for Tears: Surviving Traumatic Brain Injury Set in the mid-twentieth century, The Road to Courage is narrated by a young boy as he journeys with his family to new and wild territory on the Alaskan frontier, a land where life's priority is survival rather than comfort. This memoir sketches a portrait of his complex family-courageous, committed, flawed, and yet resilient-and, through a series of terrifying adventures, traces the unbreakable bond between the timid narrator and his fearless, fun-loving brother. The family's faith remains a central thread as the preschool brothers work beside their minister father to construct a log church in Valdez without power tools. Along the way, the reader is given a rare glimpse into life in Old Valdez, a town destroyed by the 1964 earthquake.