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New York Times bestselling author Eowyn Ivey returns to the mythical Alaskan landscape of her Pulitzer Prize finalist The Snow Child with an unforgettable reimagining of Beauty and the Beast 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. It's a tough place to be a single mother, but at least Emaleen never goes hungry. 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 a vast wilderness, hundreds of miles from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it's idyllic: Together they catch salmon, pick berries, and swim in sunlit waters. But soon Birdie realizes that she is not at all ready for the dark secret that Arthur is harboring in the Alaskan wilderness that is as mysterious and dangerous 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.
"This riff on Beauty and the Beast is well written and suspenseful, a story of a certain inner wildness and violence, of taking chances and facing the consequences, of a destructive love. Fans of Ivey's vivid, unfurling writing style and fans of creative, rich retellings will enjoy the turns and twists this novel takes." —Booklist (starred review)
"Expertly captures the duality of the Alaskan wilderness as unpredictable and perilous but beautiful and liberating too. By balancing tense, painful moments with gentle, hopeful ones ... Ivey takes readers on an emotional literary journey that includes touches of magic woven throughout and the question of whether love is enough to change someone." —Library Journal
"The novel is alive with a sense of the natural world of Alaska, which Ivey portrays as a liminal space where the human and animal kingdoms interact, and it's buoyed by gripping suspense and moments of tenderness. Ivey's fans will be well pleased." —Publishers Weekly
"[S]ome of the novel's parts mesh imperfectly: The nature of Birdie and Arthur's attraction isn't well-sold, Emaleen is cloyingly precocious, and Warren's role in the story feels unfinished...A respectable if imperfect attempt to explore the line between human and animal nature." —Kirkus Reviews
"What a book—I am still enthralled and haunted. Black Woods, Blue Sky is a fable about what it is to love, a tale of longing, a call to renew our deepest bonds with the living world. It will draw you along like a fast-moving stream, and you will find yourself in places you have never been." —Louise Erdrich, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Night Watchman and National Book Award–winning author of The Round House
"A stunning tale told by a master of her craft. Black Woods, Blue Sky is what skilled storytelling is supposed to be." —Jason Mott, National Book Award winning author of Hell of a Book, and New York Times bestselling author of The Returned
"Black Woods, Blue Sky is an enthralling novel about the endurance of love, the power of forgiveness and the savage, irresistible allure of wild places." —Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Blue Hour
This information about Black Woods, Blue Sky was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Eowyn LeMay Ivey was raised in Alaska and continues to live there with her husband and two daughters. She received her BA in journalism and minor in creative writing through the honors program at Western Washington University, studied creative nonfiction at the University of Alaska Anchorage graduate program, and worked for nearly 10 years as an award-winning reporter at the Frontiersman newspaper.
The Snow Child is informed by Eowyn's life in Alaska. Her husband is a fishery biologist with the state of Alaska. While they both work outside of the home, they are also raising their daughters in the rural, largely subsistence lifestyle in which they were both raised.
As a family, they harvest salmon and wild berries, keep a vegetable garden, turkeys and chickens, and they hunt caribou, ...
... Full Biography
Link to Eowyn Ivey's Website
Name Pronunciation
Eowyn Ivey: AYE-oh-win EYE-vee
Happy Land
by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.
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