Finding Savoonga: Letters from the Edge of America

NEVER IN THEIR WILDEST DREAMS did the young couple imagine their teaching careers would begin in a remote Yupik Eskimo village on a desolate, icy, wind-swept island in the Bering Sea.

It was 1951. On a whim, Charles "Tod" and his fiancé, Doris Derby, answer a help-wanted ad seeking teachers in Alaska. Back comes a telegram from the Bureau of Indian Affairs offering jobs 3,000 miles away in Savoonga, population 250, on St. Lawrence Island.

The village had no airport, no roads, no telephones, a...