Jean Aspen 
Arctic Son 
Fulfilling the Dream

The chronicle of a family’s first year alone in Alaskan wilderness, Arctic Son is a poetic journey of discovery into what we value in life.
In 1992 Jean Aspen and her husband, Tom, left Arizona and took their young son to live in Alaska’s interior wilderness, building a cabin out of logs, hunting for food, and letting the vast, harsh beauty of the Arctic close in around them. While Jean had faced Alaska’s wilderness before in a life‑altering experience she described in Arctic Daughter. This journey would be different. Dogged by sickness and hardships, cut off from the rest of the world, her family faced not only a test of endurance, but of its own well‑being and survival.
From a daily struggle against the elements to an encounter with a grizzly bear at arm’s length, from moments of breathtaking beauty and self‑realization to a harrowing, six‑hundred‑mile river passage back to civilization, Arctic Son chronicles fourteen remarkable months in the Alaskan wilderness. At once a portrait of courage and a heart‑pounding adventure story, Arctic Son portrays a family’s extraordinary journey into America’s last frontier.

About the author

Daughter of arctic explorer Constance Helmericks, Jean Aspen began life in the wilderness. Throughout six decades, the natural world has remained central to her. Jean is the author of Arctic Daughter and Arctic Son. She and her husband, Tom Irons, live in Alaska and spend much of each year in Alaskan wilds.