wilderness | Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Black Woods Blue Sky
Author: Eowyn Ivey
Publisher: Random House
Publication date: February 4, 2025
Length: 320 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Snow Child Eowyn Ivey returns to the mythical landscapes of Alaska with an unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks the question: Can love save us from ourselves?

Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover, sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie, he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well.

Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains, on the far side of the Wolverine River.

It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic and she can picture a happily ever after: Together they catch salmon, pick berries, and climb mountains so tall it’s as if they could touch the bright blue sky. But soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have ever imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.

Black Woods, Blue Sky is a novel with life-and-death stakes, about the love between a mother and daughter, and the allure of a wild life—about what we gain and what it might cost us.

Black Woods, Blue Sky is a creative take on motherhood and the longing for freedom, set in the remote mountains of Alaska, with a fairy tale feel that lends the story a dark, otherworldly undertone.

Birdie is a young single mother working at the bar of a roadside Alaska lodge, often drinking too much, hooking up with random men, and mostly just getting by. She’s devoted to six-year-old Emaleen, even though she sometimes leaves Emaleen sleeping alone in their cabin while she works. She’s doing the best she can, but life is hard and full of frustration. Birdie aches for something more — and daydreams about the mountain peaks she sees from the picnic table out back of the lodge.

When quiet, scarred Arthur retrieves a lost Emaleen from the woods, his gentleness and strangeness appeal to Birdie. Their talks turn into more, and eventually, Birdie and Emaleen go off to live with Arthur in his remote cabin.

It was strange, no one knowing where they were in that immense wilderness. Like free-falling.

At first, it’s perfect. The cabin is in rough shape, and Birdie delights in turning it into a home, cleaning it and making it cozy and safe for the three of them. Sure, Arthur disappears at nights and won’t talk about where he goes, but when he’s home, he’s attentive and kind, and he introduces Birdie and Emaleen to the wonders of the land, the animals, and the wildflowers that surround them.

Birdie wanted to be at ease in her own skin. She wanted to be content. All those afternoons, she’d sat on that picnic table behind the lodge and daydreamed about taking Emaleen away, across the Wolverine River, up into the mountains. Now they were here, and she should be entirely happy. But the hours were circling and meandering and bleeding into each other, and it was like the wilderness had the pull of a dangerous eddy.

Their wilderness idyll takes a dark turn eventually, and the final third of the book follows Emaleen as a college graduate, returning to Alaska for the first time in over a decade, confronting her past and coming to terms with her memories and the truth of what happened up on their mountain.

Black Woods Blue Sky is a hard book to describe. It starts slowly, but a particular revelation about a third of the way into the book takes this book in an unexpected, startling direction. Without saying more about that, all I can share is that the grit and hard work of wilderness living is interspersed with a fairy tale-like element that makes the entire story feel every-so-slightly off-kilter: We’re in our own world, but not quite.

I loved the natural setting and the author’s evocative descriptions. The writing is stellar, and made me yearn for my own little cabin in the wilderness (but perhaps with fewer deadly animals and life-threatening hazards around every turn).

It was the golden hour, the low sun casting a glow that turned the colors to richer shades — the brilliant magenta of the fireweed blossoms, the leafy green across the hayfields and the dark green of the forest with it spruce and cottonwood and birch. In the distance, the evening light brought the mountains into heightened relief so that the rock faces and ravines and jagged, snowy peaks stood out vividly. The air was warm and gentle, and everything was quiet, except for the echoing, lovely trill of the hermit thrush songbirds.

The side characters who interact with Birdie and Emaleen are a mixed bag — they’re supposed to be important to the main characters, but I didn’t always have a very good sense of who they were as individuals. Birdie is a bit of an enigma; her ache for meaning in her life and her passion for living freely are clearly shown, but it’s hard to approve of the choices she makes when they so clearly put Emaleen at risk over and over again.

Black Woods Blue Sky is fascinating and tricky and moving. It’s a book that begs to be discussed — it would make a fantastic pick for a book group book. Readers who loved The Snow Child will love this book too. Its blend of nature and fantasy, plus its focus on parents and children, is affecting and thought-provoking, and it’s a reading experience that stays with you even after reading the final pages and closing the covers.

Title: The God of the Woods
Author: Liz Moore
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Publication date: July 2, 2024
Length: 490 pages
Genre: Mystery/thriller
Source: Library
Rating:

When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide.

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.

In The God of the Woods, an intricate timeline and multiple points of view bring to vivid life the story of missing children, a privileged family, and its influence over the working class people who depend upon them for their livelihoods.

The story opens at Camp Emerson, a summer camp located on the grounds of the Van Laar Preserve. The Van Laar family bought this vast property in the Adirondacks from loggers several generations back, and have turned it into their mountain getaway. Their huge house, named Self-Reliance, dominates the hilltop overlooking the lake; down the hill, the staff of the camp tend to the children of wealthy families each summer.

In the summer of 1975, 13-year-old Barbara Van Laar attends camp for the first time. She’s an independent-minded, punk rock-loving teen who’s happy to be out from under her parents’ control for the eight weeks of camp, and she quickly bonds with one of the other new girls in her cabin. But in August, Barbara’s counselor wakes up to discover that Barbara’s bed is empty, and fears the worst.

Fourteen years earlier, the first Van Laar child — named Peter (Peter IV, to be exact) but known as Bear, also went missing from the Van Laar Preserve and was never found, despite a huge search. Now, fears run high that the same fate has befallen Barbara, and news that a notorious serial killer has escaped prison and is on the lam in the Adirondacks only adds to the searchers’ desperation.

But there is so much more to the story than a missing person’s case. As each chapter begins, a different date is highlighted, and the narrative jumps between the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, as well as between different points in that fateful summer of 1975. The story is not told chronologically; confusing at first, but ultimately, adding to the depth of the character portrayals and giving readers plenty of clues and red herrings to chew over.

Beyond the dual mysteries surrounding Bear and Barbara, the book also is a portrait of the deep divide between haves and have-nots. The Van Laars are seemingly untouchable. They and their wealthy, powerful friends control the area, providing the only source of employment for the nearest small town since the paper factory shut down years earlier. No one can afford to get on the Van Laars’ bad side, even if it means looking away when bad things happen.

I was hesitant to pick up The God of the Woods, not sure that the genre and writing would appeal to me, based on comments I’d read here and there. I’m so glad I got past my concerns and gave it a try. After some initial struggles with the jumps between timelines, I became more comfortable with the book’s structure and ended up finding the chronology fascinating. As for the writing itself, it’s tense and illuminating, and doesn’t drag a bit — those 500 pages absolutely flew by.

With so many point-of-view characters, it may feel almost overwhelming at first to keep track of them all, but ultimately, having so many perspectives — some accurate, some not — on the events of 1975 as well as the earlier disappearance, only adds to the depth of the story. The depiction of the Van Laars and their guests, lounging about in satin pajamas even when a child goes missing, is a chilling portrait of cold power and indifference. And then there’s the setting itself, the beautiful, dangerous forests of the Adirondacks — where campers are taught to immediately sit down and start yelling if they realize they’re lost. The Van Laar home may seem luxurious and civilized, but it’s surrounded by wilderness, which ultimately holds more power than the people who come there.

My only quibble with this book is that the title seems like an odd choice to me. Yes, it’s somewhat clearer by the end, but generally speaking, it seems pretty disconnected from the overall story. On the other hand, the cover is brilliant. It’ll make more sense once you read the book!

I can’t say enough good things about The God of the Woods. By the time I passed the halfway mark, I couldn’t put it down and wanted nothing more than uninterrupted time to read straight through to the end. Don’t miss this well-written, thought-provoking, surprising, twisty book!