6 x 9, 316 pages, index, maps, appendices, bibliography Format: paper Price: $28.00 2001, Alaska History Series, no. 51

This book focuses on seven years in the life of a young Baltic German noblewoman. Baroness Elisabeth von Wrangell, who in 1829 set off with her husband from their native Estonia on an 18-month odyssey through Russia, Siberia, and across the North Pacific to the Russian-American colonies. The couple took up residence in the colonial fur trading capital of NovoArkhangel'sk (Sitka), where the dynamic naval captain and former Arctic explorer Baron Ferdinand (Petrovich) von Wrangell began his five-year term as governor of the Russian colonies and chief manager of the Russian-American Company holdings in North America.