Beyond Ophir: Confessions of an Iditarod Musher, An Alaska Odyssey

Jim Lanier had a good life going: a great family, a successful pathologist, a sometimes singer. Then he went to the dogs, ran the Iditarod in 1979, and has never recovered. With that ‘79 race as the book’s backbone, Jim tells its tale—entertaining, exciting, occasionally informative, and mostly the truth. From the bustle of metropolitan Anchorage to Front Street in Nome, it’s no how to do. If anything, it’s a how not to—how not to prepare, how not to train, how not to run. On the other hand, it’s how not to give in to the urge to quit when the going gets tough, in life and in this metaphorical Iditarod.