Mocked and ridiculed in his North Country home for being unable to change with the times, a stubborn, ignorant old man lights out for Alaska at 72, taking with him the daughter of a skinflint farmer he has worked for years back. Clarence knows little of women or of living with anybody or even of living in the present tense, nor does he really know where Alaska is. But he's given up self-respect and good conduct, he's on the road across Canada in a pickup truck with a fat and talkative person, determined to sin at last and going into a land he knows only in folk-ballad, the Wild West and...

"Survival " provides readers with a set of tools to help students (and prospective students) of first-year college composition get through the semester. This is not a grammar or punctuation book, but a collection of strategies on how to approach the college experience and what to expect when entering the often-dreaded English101. The author, a 20-year veteran of teaching freshman composition, takes a light-hearted look at the problems new students often encounter, and offers a few tips on how to avoid the common pitfalls.