Elbow Room

A Memoir In May 2003, peripatetic traveler and writer Rob Torkildson journeyed to a remote island in the Bering Sea in search of an extreme landscape where he hoped to "drop out" of his increasingly secure and uninspiring life and renew his inner sense of wonder and adventure. Elbow Room is a memoir of Rob Torkildson's three years of living in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. This is a colorful and captivating tale of self discovery, adventure and exploration, historical reflections, and a vivid portrait of a striving community trying to hang on in one of the harshest climates on planet Earth. In Elbow Room you will find Torkildson rubbing shoulders with salty fisherman, historians and archeologists, world renowned explorers, America's Most Wanted, African and Cuban fish processors, ghosts from the past, Aleut artists and Japanese fish masters, a landscape both inhospitable and stunningly beautiful.