Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

COLVILLE LAKE (May 15/98) - The first volume of Bern Will Brown's Northern opus is selling briskly and he says a second volume will be published as soon as the 2,500 copies of the first book sell out.

"The book has been doing quite well," Brown said last week from Colville Lake, where he now hangs his hat. "I've sold about 300 by myself and I've just put in an order with the publisher for more copies."

The first volume of his Arctic Journal relates his adventures as a minister in the North from his arrival here in the late 1940s to 1955 in its 272 pages and is illustrated with 32 pages of photographs. The second volume, which is already written, takes over in 1955 as Inuvik was being built and carries through to the present day.

Originally, Brown's story was to have been published in one piece by publisher McClelland and Stewart but they took a look at the huge manuscript and demanded some major cuts, so Brown went instead to a printer who agreed to publish the two volumes separately.

"They asked me to cut it to 100,000 words and I didn't want to do that because I had made three or four cuts to it already," he recalled.

The book has been getting positive press since its release, with the Toronto Star book section praising it as "altogether fascinating." It has also been crossing borders, with the most recent review coming from the Rochester, N.Y. Democrat-Chronicle running a piece about it.

"They liked it," Brown said.

The second volume of the book, when it was issued, will also be printed in a run of 2,500, Brown says.

The first volume of Arctic Journal was Brown's second book. His first published work was Aklavik Journal, which sold almost all of its 2,000-copy first run. Both books are available at Boreal Books in Inuvik.