Author Cheryle Coapstick has garnered strong reviews for a spot-on depiction of her birthplace, fishing hub and former Russian colonial city Sitka, Alaska, in her latest book, a compelling account of her extraordinary family.

Local readers will no doubt also recognize a La Conner influence through the pages of “Alaska’s Firy”.

That is by design. Coapstick, after all, is a 1967 La Conner High grad now living in Mount Vernon.

Scenes in “Alaska’s Firy” set at the Sitka Café and Sitka Sentinel newspaper office are reminiscent of those that folks living in La Conner during the 1960s would ha...