From Page to Place: Discover the Real Locations that Inspired a Cosy Southeast Alaska Mystery

Looking for the perfect vacation read for your cruise through Southeast Alaska? How about a cosy mystery in which the crime takes place in a Southeast Alaskan bookstore? Death at the Shipshape Bookshop by Greta McKennan will have you feeling like you’ve stepped into the book with your first step off your ship onto the dock in Juneau, Alaska.

According to Google, the definition of a cosy mystery is, “a light-hearted murder mystery, typically featuring an amateur sleuth, that takes place in a small, close-knit community.” Death at the Shipshape Bookshop certainly fits this definition.

Junetta, the proprietor of a dock-side bookshop, arrives one morning to find a local man has been murdered in her shop and her uncle has seemingly been framed for the crime! With everyone in town now a possible suspect, and her brother the arresting officer hamstrung by bureaucracy, she takes it upon herself to prove her uncle’s innocence. So we have our amateur sleuth, but what about the close-knit community?

Technically the book takes place in a fictional Southeast Alaska town called Ptarmigan Port. Many of the features of Ptarmigan Port, however, closely resemble locations in Juneau. So let me help you discover the real locations that inspired local Juneau author, Greta McKennan, to write her first Southeast Alaska cosy mystery novel.

The Shipshape Bookshop & Last Chance Cafe (Hearthside Books, Juneau / Old Harbor Books & Backdoor Cafe, Sitka)

During the months between Tourist Season, Junetta cruises Alaska’s Inside Passage taking a floating bookstore to Alaskan villages. When our story starts, Junetta has just cruised back into Ptarmigan Port, stepped off her boat, and finds herself outside her brick and mortar bookstore.

“My bookshop occupied two storefronts […] The window on the left displayed an array of Alaska books and maps, interspersed with the latest best sellers as well as some colorful picture books. The window on the right showcased the Last Chance Cafe […]”
– Death at the Shipshape Bookshop

Similar to Ptarmigan Port, Juneau has a bookstore in a harbor-side mall building that you can visit within short order of stepping off the dock. Hearthside Books can be found in the blue Wharf mall just at the end of the cruise ship dock. It’s an excellent little bookshop (recently voted #8 in USA Today’s Top 10 Independent Bookstores of 2025) if you’re looking to pick up a new book for yourself or Alaskana books to take home as gifts. The one thing you won’t find, however, is an attached cafe.

If your ship stops in Sitka, however, you will find a bookstore on the main shopping street, Old Harbor Books, that has an adjoining cafe, Back Door Cafe. This bookstore/cafe combo is a cosy place to take a break. Stop in the bookstore to stock up on books and activities for your cruise and check out the large antique printing press that sits in the middle of the shop. Then head through the back door of the bookshop to the cafe for a drink and pastry and maybe a sit down to enjoy your bookstore spoils.

Tongass Glacier & The Ridge Trail (Mendenhall Glacier & West Glacier Trail)

“The Tongass Glacier was our town’s biggest attraction. […] the best way to see the glacier was to hike along its west side on the Ridge Trail […]”
– Death at the Shipshape Bookshop

While Juneau is definitely in the Tongass Rain Forest, and the town’s biggest attraction really is the glacier, it’s called the Mendenhall Glacier, not the Tongass Glacier. Though if I’m being honest, the Tongass Glacier might be a better name for it? Anyway, while Junetta recommends the “west side Ridge Trail,” in reality, Juneau has a “West Glacier Trail” and an “East Glacier Trail.” The West Glacier, however, is the only trail in town with signs warning that a number of people have to be rescued from it each year. The East Glacier is an easier loop trail that’s hard to get lost on and is thus the one recommended for tourists and those unfamiliar with the locale. And besides, the East Glacier trailhead is accessed right at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, so if you’re looking for a trail near a glacier, I recommend this one. If you’re looking for the best way to see the glacier, however, I think the view is better from the parking lot than the trail at this point.

Miner’s Beach & the Seaside Mine (Sandy Beach & Treadwell Mine)

“A popular recreation spot with locals, Miner’s Beach was the site of an early gold mine operation, the Seaside Mine that had flourished in the years leading up to World War I.”
– Death at the Shipshape Bookshop

Across from Juneau’s downtown where the cruise ships dock is a large island. As the ships arrive and depart from port they pass a stretch of sandy beach along the Juneau-facing coast of the island. This is known as Sandy Beach, and all that sand is actually mine tailings from the Treadwell Mine that operated right there up until World War I. The forested area just uphill from the beach was once a bustling mining company town larger than Juneau. Just days after the United States entered WWI, the entire underground mine complex flooded. Consequently, Treadwell became a ghost town almost overnight as its inhabitants, now jobless, left for new war jobs. And the forest has been reclaiming the area ever since.

Sandy Beach and the Treadwell Mine area, really is a popular recreation area for locals and their dogs. The forest contains walking trails along which you can see the remains of some of the buildings that once made up the town of Treadwell. You can take a self-guided tour of the Treadwell ruins using the Juneau-Douglas City Museum walking guide or there’s a new Treadwell augmented reality tour (I cannot vouch for it though, as I haven’t yet experienced the AR tour). Oh, and watch out for flying frisbees while you walk, because locals also use the area for disc golf!

Shipwreck of the S. S. Fortune (Point Lena Trail or Whale Watching)

Unfortunately, as cool as it would be, there are no glass-bottom boat tours of shipwrecks in Juneau like the S. S. Fortune tour in the book. That isn’t to say there aren’t local shipwrecks. The two most notable were the ships S. S. Princess Kathleen and the S. S. Princess Sophia. The Kathleen sank in 1952 after grounding on Point Lena on Juneau’s mainland. All passengers and crew were able to evacuate the ship safely before it slipped backwards into the watery depth and today the sunken vessel is a local dive site. The Sophia, on the other hand, sank in 1918 after grounding on Vanderbuilt Reef in Lynn Canal with all 364 persons still on board. To this day it is still the worst maritime accident in Alaska. Like the book’s S. S. Fortune, the S. S. Sophia was carrying gold ingots and they have never been recovered.

Although you won’t be able to get to either shipwreck unless you’re a diver, you can walk the Point Lena trail to a cliff-side overlook where you can see the buoys marking the S. S. Kathleen’s resting place. The trail is about a mile long through the forest and ends at a bench with a great view.

Although you won’t be able to shipwreck gawk in Juneau, there are several whale watching tours available. So you can still get out on the water to see humpback whales, and if you’re lucky, maybe even an orca!

Seven Mile Creek & Lucky Mine (Gold Creek & Last Chance Mine)

In the book, Craig Cornell discovered gold in 1902 in Ptarmigan Port’s Seven Mile Creek. In reality, a man named Joe Juneau discovered gold in 1880 in what is now known in Juneau as Gold Creek. Although there’s hardly any gold left to be found in the creek today, if you want to try your hand at gold panning, there is a tour that will take you gold panning in Gold Creek (but they’ll hand you a pan full of dirt with some gold flecks in it and show you how to pan to find the flecks already in your pan).

And speaking of gold mining, the final showdown in the book happens near a boarded up old mine adit of the former Lucky Mine. There is actually a place called Lucky Me near Juneau. It’s on Douglas Island farther south than Sandy Beach and only accessible by boat. The location that is more likely the inspiration for the book’s Lucky Mine is the Last Chance Mine. This is in the same area as the Gold Creek gold panning expedition. Just off the parking lot, a few feet up the beginning of the Perseverance Trail, is a boarded up adit into the former mine. After taking a photo with the boarded up former mine adit, you can head to the nearby Last Chance Mining Museum to learn more about Juneau’s mining history.

The Grizzly Bar

While you can visit all the locations listed above to get a sense of the landscape that inspired this cosy mystery, it’s hard to get a sense of the actual community, the inhabitants of the place, if you’re only dropping in for a short visit. And it’s the characters, the tight-knit community, that make up an important element of a cosy mystery. So what better place to momentarily feel part of a community than at a local bar? There are several to choose from in downtown Juneau. Take a break from touring, pop into a local pub, and chat up the locals working behind the bar. Perhaps you’ll learn a little about the unique Southeast Alaskan community in which they live and work every day.

A Map of Locations: Begin planning your own cozy adventure!

P.S. I had the pleasure of getting the author, Greta McKennan, to sign my copy of her book so I asked her if her inspiration for locations in her novel came from other Southeast Alaskan cities besides Juneau. Her answer was that the locations in her novel are a mix of inspiration from Juneau and her imagination. And the book’s cover art, although she’s been asked if it might be Ketchikan or perhaps Pelican, is again, inspired by Juneau and her imagination.

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