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Andrew Joyce left high school at seventeen to hitchhike throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico. He
wouldn’t return from his journey until decades later when he decided to become a writer. Joyce has
written four books, including a two-volume collection of one hundred and forty short stories
comprised of his hitching adventures called BEDTIME STORIES FOR GROWN-UPS (as yet
unpublished), and his latest novel, RESOLUTION. He now lives aboard a boat in Fort Lauderdale,
Florida, with his dog, Danny, where he is busy working on his next book, YELLOW HAIR.
It is 1896 in the Yukon Territory, Canada. The largest gold strike in the annals of human history
has just been made; however, word of the discovery will not reach the outside world for another
year.
By happenstance, a fifty-nine- year-old Huck Finn and his lady friend, Molly Lee, are on hand,
but they are not interested in gold. They have come to that neck of the woods seeking adventure.
Someone should have warned them, “Be careful what you wish for.”
When disaster strikes, they volunteer to save the day by making an arduous six hundred mile
journey by dog sled in the depths of a Yukon winter. They race against time, nature, and man.
With the temperature hovering around seventy degrees below zero, they must fight every day if
they are to live to see the next.
On the frozen trail, they are put upon by murderers, hungry wolves, and hostile Indians, but those
adversaries have nothing over the weather. At seventy below, your spit freezes a foot from your
face. Your cheeks burn—your skin turns purple and black as it dies from the cold. You are in
constant danger of losing fingers and toes to frostbite.
It is into this world that Huck and Molly race.
They cannot stop. They cannot turn back. They can only go on. Lives hang in the
balance—including theirs.
GUEST POST
My name is Andrew Joyce and I write books for a living. Becky has been kind enough to allow
me a little space on her blog to promote my new novel RESOLUTION: Huck Finn’s Greatest
Adventure. I think it’s a good book, but what do I know? Anyway, I’m kinda shy about tooting my
own horn. So I think I’ll turn things over to my dog, Danny, to toot it for me. He always has an
attitude and usually does not speak highly of me. But please understand that we co-exist as the
old Soviet Union and the United States once co-existed. We tolerate each other. So without
further ado, here’s Danny the Dog.
Andrew took me away from watching reruns of Lassie to help him out here. For a person who
works with words for a living, he has very little to say in real life. He wants me to tout his book
for him, but I don’t think I will. Instead, I think I’ll tell you about our latest adventure. We’re
always having adventures. I like to write about them and what I write is 100% true.
Hello dog fans, it is I, Danny the Dog! I’ve been helping Andrew look after three Labrador
retrievers. What a nightmare! There is Chloe, who is fourteen months old, and then there is Beau
and Hank. They are both four months old and they are holy terrors. They live on a boat down at
the end of the dock. (We live on a boat also.) Their human was going out of town and he asked
my human to look after them and Andrew, being the idiot that he is, said yes.
First of all, I want to say to Jeff, the human that lives with the three monsters, don’t ever leave
them in Andrew’s care again. I wouldn’t trust him to look after a taco, much less three dogs.
The trouble started right away. Jeff had two crates (humans call them crates; I call them cages)
for Beau and Hank because, as I’ve said, they are holy terrors. Andrew went over to take them
for their first walk after Jeff left, and of course, he has to take me along to help out. Anyway,
Andrew gets them out of the crates and is getting them off the boat when clumsy Hank falls into
the water.
Let me paint the picture for you. It was nighttime. It was dark. The water was dark and Hank is
black. Andrew and I could see nothing of Hank. We could only hear him splashing around. The
dock is about five feet above the water so Andrew couldn’t get him out by standing on the dock.
Being the genius that he is (just kidding), Andrew got on the swim platform, which—for you
landlubbers—is attached to the back of a boat and is only a foot above the water.
Now this is where Andrew’s “genius” comes into play. He took off his glasses and placed them
on the transom so they wouldn’t slip off while he was bending over to pull Hank out of the
water. He called to Hank. Hank swam over and Andrew got him onto the boat. Then Andrew
went to get his glasses and they were not there or anywhere else on the boat. It looked as though
Beau knocked them into the water because he had his paws up in that general vicinity while he
was watching Andrew rescue his brother (they’re twins). All this in the first five minutes of
Andrew looking after the monsters. And it only got better, and by better, I mean worse. I had a
ball watching Andrew trying to cope for four days.
On to the next disaster, but first a side note. For some reason Beau is enthralled with me. The
damn dog wouldn’t leave me alone. He put his snoot in my face, ran around me, bounced around
me; he was a royal pain in my rear end. Finally, I had to growl at him and give him a little nip on
his snoot to get some peace.
Now back to Andrew’s genius. We got the dogs back on the boat without further mishaps.
Andrew fed them and all was well. But then Andrew decided not to put Hank and Beau in their
crates. He felt sorry for them being cooped up like that. Big mistake!
The next morning when we went to get them, there was poop everywhere. The whole floor was
covered in it. The babies had gotten into the dog food bag, ripped it open and ate it all. Then they
pooped everywhere and walked in it. They got it on the couch, on the sliding glass doors, on
everything. I think even on the ceiling. Needless to say, after spending two hours cleaning it all
up, Andrew changed his mind about the crates.
Last night we were hanging out. Andrew was staring into space because he did not have his
glasses and could not read a book or see the computer screen. I was on the computer starting this
story when Chloe came onto our boat. She’s always coming here and stealing my water bowl! To
date, she has taken five. But she should have been locked up on her own boat! Andrew got up,
looked out, saw Jeff, and said, “Thank God! Thank God!” I barked the same thing. Our days of
taking care of the monsters were over. Thank God!
P.S. This morning Jeff came over with Andrew’s glasses. Beau had taken them and hidden them
in his stash place
That’s about it for now. If I hurry, I might be able to catch that old Rin Tin Tin movie on TCM.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot—check out Andrew’s new book on Amazon and make the old guy’s
day.
This is Andrew again. On behalf of Danny and myself, I would like to thank Becky for having us
over. It’s been a real pleasure.
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