Kings of the Yukon

A River Journey in Search of the Chinook

By: Adam Weymouth, Harold R. Johnson

Narrated by: Charlie Anson

Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

A stunning new voice in nature writing makes an epic journey along the Yukon River to give us the stories of its people and its protagonist - the king salmon, or the Chinook - and the deepening threat to a singular way of life, in a lyrical, evocative, and captivating narrative.

The Yukon River is 3,190 kilometers long, flowing northwest from British Columbia through the Yukon Territory and Alaska to the Bering Sea. Every summer, millions of salmon migrate the distance of this river to their spawning ground, where they go to breed and then die. The Chinook is the most highly prized among the five species of Pacific salmon for its large size and rich, healthy oils. It has long since formed the lifeblood of the economy and culture along the Yukon - there are few communities that have been so reliant on a single source. Now, as the region contends with the effects of a globalized economy, climate change, fishing quotas, and the general drift toward urban life, the health and numbers of the Chinook are in question, as is the fate of the communities that depend on them.

Traveling in a canoe along the Yukon River with the migrating salmon, a three-month journey through untrammeled wilderness, Adam Weymouth traces the profound interconnectedness of the people and the Chinook through searing portraits of the individuals he encounters. He offers a powerful, nuanced glimpse into the erosion of indigenous culture and into our ever-complicated relationship with the natural world. Weaving in the history of the salmon run and their mysterious life cycle, Kings of the Yukon is extraordinary adventure and nature writing and social history at its most compelling.

©2018 Adam Weymouth, Harold R. Johnson (P)2018 Knopf Canada

Critic reviews

2019 Lonely Planet Adventure Travel Book of the Year

Winner of the 2018 Sunday Times/Peters Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award

Short-listed for UK's Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize

“Shift over, Pierre Berton and Farley Mowat. You, too, Robert Service. Set another place at the table for Adam Weymouth, who writes as powerfully and poetically about the Far North as any of the greats who went before him.” (Roy MacGregor, author of Original Highways: Travelling the Great Rivers of Canada)

“A moving, masterful portrait of a river, the people who live on its banks, and the salmon that connect their lives to the land. It is at once travelogue, natural history, and a meditation on the sort of wildness of which we are intrinsically a part. Adam Weymouth deftly illuminates the symbiosis between humans and the natural world - a relationship so ancient, complex, and mysterious that it just might save us.” (Kate Harris, author of Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road)

“Travel writing? Climate change? Here’s a book that does it all.... He writes like Annie Dillard, Bruce Chatwin and Jack London combined: suspenseful and sensitive storytelling and sumptuous descriptions.” (National Observer)