Pipeline

Fictional novel about the trans-Alaskan pipeline.

Pipeline takes place in Alaska and depicts the conflicts between dedicated environmentalists concerned with Alaska's future and the opportunistic oilmen who care only about constructing a nine-hundred-mile pipeline through Alaska's beautiful unsurpassed wilderness.

The novel is centered on a beautiful young woman named Laura and the two men who love her: Matt and Seth. The three are cast against the problems and consequences of Alaska, the last wilderness state.

Matt is ruggedly handsome, a forty-year-old tough-minded individualist working as a troubleshooter for the oilmen. Women are sensually drawn to him, and men tend to respect his authority.

Seth is a newspaper reporter and a native Alaskan, a Ralph Nader-character, about twenty-five years old. Wealthy, intelligent, and the leader of the Pikes, a dedicated environmentalist group who are concerned with the future of Alaska.

Laura is the young beauty. Troubled in youth, she leaves her hometown in Montana to seek romanticism in Alaska.

The narrative drive of this novel is the antagonistic sensitivity of Matt and Seth, as different in makeup and character as is their perception of Alaska. Seth is a preservationist in his ideals wanting to protect Alaska, her beauty, and her natural resources. Matt has excelled through life by his wits and sheer gut-level ambitions. He sees the chance of the state opening up to the oilmen and is determined to gain the power and wealth involved in the operation of building the Alaskan pipeline.

A power struggle mounts between the Pikes and the opportunists over the infamy of the pipeline, the infiltration of outsiders, and the aversion of Alaska becoming a concrete domain laden with billboards and litter.