By AMY M. ARMSTRONG
For the Star

A former Eagle River resident has her first novel coming out next year.

Cindy Dyson

Both worked as cocktail waitresses in the Elbow Room Bar in Dutch Harbor - a recently closed down drinking establishment whose rowdy and raunchy reputation lives on in Alaska folklore.

Both went to the near end of the Aleutian Island chain looking for some adventure, direction and perhaps a few answers to life's questions.

Both are blonde.

"The basic question of the book - the question of free will - came from what I saw working at the Elbow Room," Dyson said in a phone interview from her home in Montana. "I would see women working in bars that were much older than I and they were doing just what I was doing as a 20-year-old and I would wonder how they got stuck there."

In "And She Was," the reader meets Brandy as she is taking the ferry from the Alaska mainland to Dutch Harbor. She has followed the latest of her questionable boyfriends, a fisherman. She's had a string of failed relationships and is just starting to ask herself the "why" question.

Dyson too followed a fisherman out to Dutch Harbor.

But that's about where the similarity between her and Brandy ends, Dyson said.

Indeed, Dyson said she had a little difficulty in writing Brandy's life.

"I wanted to call someone and interview them to find out what Brandy does next," said Dyson, a former reporter and daughter of state Sen. Fred Dyson of Eagle River. "I had an ideal childhood and Brandy did not. Yes, I made her blonde like me, but her problems were just opposite of mine and in some ways, I didn't even know her and I certainly didn't do most of the things that Brandy does in the novel."

After the initial read around the family kitchen table last year, Jane Dyson, Cindy's mother, said she began to see the genius in her daughter's work.

It contains some adult language and scenes of overt drug use suitable perhaps only for mature readers as Brandy realizes she's been using her sexuality - a trick she learned from her mother - rather than intellectual capabilities to guide her in life. Jane said the story her daughter tells depicts the reality that many in life have to go through some rough and tough circumstances before making their way in life.

Dyson alternates chapters dealing with Brandy's life and chapters showing cultural flashbacks beginning with the desperate act of a young Native woman, whose village was destroyed by Russian invaders in the late 16th century.

By combining the question of free will in her book with the mystery of the perseverance of the Aleut culture through centuries of various invasions, Dyson weaves parallel stories that give readers an accurate glimpse into the Aleut culture - one relatively unknown to most people outside of Alaska - and how the power of free will can set a soul free.

The book was initially to be released in November.

But publisher William Morrow and her agent and publicist decided the book might do better after the holidays when authors like King and Grisham aren't taking up as much precious retail space in book stores.

"I was told it would do better if it didn't have to compete against them," said Dyson.

She does have one thing working in her favor.

The most frequent question posed to her while those in the publishing business perused her book was if she really grew up in Alaska.

"The Alaska thing is what really interested folks in New York," Dyson said.

Dyson has completed a fall tour of book buyers' conventions and is immersing herself in reading the work of other new authors between her duties as a full-time mom and homeschooler and getting ready for a February trip back to Alaska.

An advance copy of her book is making the rounds through friends and family acquaintances.

It's called the "Wayward Book Tour" and is chronicled on her Web site, www.cindydyson.com.

Reach the reporter at news@alaskastar.com.

This article published in The Alaska Star on Thursday, October 27, 2005.