Will Steinfeld spends time with Anchorage resident Mike Thompson, uncovering the bizarre story of how he found his father, a former GQ model. Keeping this decades-spanning story pithy, Steinfield manages to reveal Thompson’s staunch character and own impressive achievements while documenting the journey to finding his long-lost dad.
Thompson doesn’t exactly come across as the son of a GQ model. He’s more likely to be outdoors, and dressed for it, biking almost every day out Lutak. His list of former ranger posts is a paragraph long and half a continent across: Girdwood, Yakutat, Sitka, Denali, Ketchikan. Then up to “the big leagues,” as he describes the National Park Service, working posts in Utah, the Cascades, Western Arctic National Park, Kenai Fjords, and Wrangell St. Elias, where he would fly patrols in a single-engine Supercub as one of three rangers responsible for a land area 20 times larger than the state of Rhode Island. Before his career as a park ranger, Thompson spent half a decade as a Federal Air Marshall, and before that was an Air Force aviator.
More picks on family
Road Trip at the Borderland
A trip along the North Korean border, with a Chinese father and his estranged daughter, plastic bags of food, and an 81-year-old grandmother who refuses to wear a seat belt.
The Unforeseen Something
When a little girl in Iowa was diagnosed with a rare incurable disease, her parents and their community came together to help her. They wound up making medical history.
Behind His Great Novels, an Unbearable Family Secret
“The Irish author Sebastian Barry has made a career of mining his family history. But he kept one story buried.”
Still On Its Way to Cleveland
Nine months, 25,000 miles, one phone cord, and the kindness of strangers.
Murder-in-Law
“The twisted story of a domestic contract killing.”
Memory Architecture
“Devotion to a Florida home.”
