Go to Kendra Langford Shaw’s website, and it’s all about her life in Billings, Montana. That makes sense since Shaw is a longstanding member of the community and now sits on the City Council.
But while Shaw is deeply rooted there, she never let go of her childhood in the tiny, remote island town of Sitka, Alaska. Her family moved to Montana when she was eight, but the state loomed so large in her memory that her first novel, “The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos,” is set up north, focusing on the close-knit and intrepid Spahr family as they struggle to maintain their life in their beloved wilderness.
The family ekes out a living from nature (farming for octopus eggs) and flying charters into the bush (as Shaw’s father really did), while young Finley Spahr repeatedly risks his life diving into the treacherous deep in the hopes of retrieving the valuable pianos lost there by homesteaders two centuries earlier. The book also flashes back two hundred years to young Moose Spahr, who makes the dangerous and arduous trek to the land his family will live on, lugging the piano required in exchange for the deed.
It’s a story filled with adventure and peril, but it’s also a book about our changing environment and the will to survive. Mostly, though, it’s a novel about family and the bonds that sometimes stretch and sometimes break.
Shaw discussed the connections between her life and the book in a recent video interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.
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Q. The characters have a constant pull and push about leaving Alaska. Was that true for you?
Definitely. I had a really difficult time when we moved. For years, I didn’t like living in Montana. I know I was so young, and it should have been fine, but I wanted to go back.
I missed walking to school with my friends, but also, when you’re eight, you see things differently. Everything seems big and vibrant and exciting. At ten years old, I kept trying to save money to buy a plane ticket. So Alaska always loomed so large for me.
Q. Maybe you’d never have written a novel if you hadn’t left.
Honestly, that’s true. I used to sit and write all these stories about how much I wanted to go back there. If we stayed, my life might have been really boring, but it became so iconic in my mind.
Q. Early settlers of the West and Alaska really did haul impractical items across unforgiving landscapes — including pianos. And your dad delivered musical instruments to Alaska’s bush. The piano is both a majestic heirloom and a weighty albatross. What did they symbolize for you in the book?
Both things. They’re ridiculous to haul. When I was in junior high, we took a trip to a museum with pictures of the crazy stuff people abandoned along the way out West — giant dressers and huge crates of china — but pianos are unique because, unlike other instruments, they’re often passed down in families. And there are unique designs that represent the idea of what you are carrying and what you want to pass down. As a parent, I think about what I’m carrying right now that I want to make sure gets passed down to my kids. And it might not be a physical object.
Q. But with the piano, you’re also passing on your burden.
That’s the weird tension about what we inherit. Some of it is great, some not so good. What do you need to let go? If we don’t do that work in our own lives, we just end up passing on our own traumas.
Q. What are the metaphorical pianos you inherited?
My parents never talked about it — they’d just say, “we’re going abalone hunting” or “it’s time to feed the horses” — it was just what we did. Our houses were always under construction because my parents were always trying to make them better.
They handed down a deep love of place and commitment to making a life in places that are challenging. I value that and think it’s what brought me to work on the city council.
Q. The Alaska of your novel is beautiful and wondrous, but also unforgiving and deadly.
People are attracted to places like that because they’re beautiful and remote, so not everybody can experience them. But it comes at a cost, like living in a big city — there are benefits and drawbacks.
Q. Several key characters die tragically because of this environment. Do you want readers to focus on that loss or on the resilience of the survivors?
My 14-year-old read it and said, “Too many sad things happen,” but I felt like they were necessary because of the environment they live in, and I would hope the reader focuses more on the characters’ resilience. Tragic things happen in all of our lives, but finding pieces of joy and connection that come out of those events is much more important to me, and I wanted all the characters to wrestle with that. You’ve got to figure out how to move on and build a life while still carrying their memory with you.
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Q. Your characters talk about developing the right muscles — physical and mental — for their lifestyle. What muscles did you develop growing up in Alaska or Montana that you’re most proud of?
The muscle that I’ve worked on forever is my storytelling. It’s not just about writing this book – it’s about getting involved in my community and my city council work.
It’s how humans relate – we tell stories about our lives, and we try to make sense of it all that way.
So much of my government work is about communicating what we’re doing for you. I need to raise your water fees, but it hits differently if I say that pipes don’t last forever, and we’re trying to create a pipe replacement plan so your grandkids aren’t hit with a huge bill at some point to replace all the pipes in the city. We’re always talking about what you want your city and your to be and thinking about it through that lens.
And local government is like building a world for characters in my book: how do they get groceries and mail, where’s their library? I can look out there and say, “I voted for that playground, and it’s there now,” and “I called about that pothole, and it’s fixed.”
Q. You sound like Leslie Knope from “Parks and Recreation.”
I feel Leslie Knope-ish. It’s exciting to be part of positive change for my community. And it helped me as a writer, forcing me to sit down and answer those practical questions. There’s a lot of overlap. More writers should run for local office.