-
Access Our
Most Anticipated
Books of 2025!
Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Book Reviewed by:From the bestselling author of The Snow Child, a thrilling tale of historical adventure set in the Alaskan wilderness.
In the winter of 1885, Lieutenant Colonel Allen Forrester sets out with his men on an expedition into the newly acquired territory of Alaska. Their objective: to travel up the ferocious Wolverine River, mapping the interior and gathering information on the region's potentially dangerous native tribes. With a young and newly pregnant wife at home, Forrester is anxious to complete the journey with all possible speed and return to her. But once the crew passes beyond the edge of the known world, there's no telling what awaits them.
With gorgeous descriptions of the Alaskan wilds and a vivid cast of characters - including Forrester, his wife Sophie, a mysterious Eyak guide, and a Native American woman who joins the expedition - To the Bright Edge of the World is an epic tale of one of America's last frontiers, combining myth, history, romance, and adventure.
Ivey cleverly juxtaposes the practical ambitions of Forrester and his crew against the deeply knowledgeable ways of the native Indians they travel with and encounter, whose warnings are communicated in a language of legend and symbolism. She acknowledges the vast terrain between their ways of thinking, the loss of a culture and tradition; and then searches for the good, demonstrating the tender aspect of ignorant explorers, opening their eyes to the mystical, even though they bury what they have witnessed to save face...continued
Full Review
(806 words)
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access,
become a member today.
(Reviewed by Claire McAlpine).
Just as reading a Russian folktale inspired her to write The Snow Child, so too did the concept for Eowyn Ivey's second novel arise from a piece of literature - this time on the fragile pages of a rare book she discovered at the bookshop where she worked.
Too expensive to purchase, she asked the owner's permission and took it home for an evening. Staying up late, she read passages aloud to her husband. Despite growing up in Alaska, this was an elemental history of the region she knew nothing about. The book was Lieutenant Henry Allen's Report of an Expedition to the Copper, Tananá, and Kóyukuk Rivers, and it would become the inspiration for her novel, To the Bright Edge of the World, the fictitious Wolverine River ...
This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.
If you liked To the Bright Edge of the World, try these:
by Elizabeth Church
Published 2017
In the spirit of The Aviator's Wife and Loving Frank, this resonant debut spans the years from World War II through the Vietnam War to tell the story of a woman whose scientific ambition is caught up in her relationships with two very different men.
by Hampton Sides
Published 2015
New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides returns with a white-knuckle tale of polar exploration and survival in the Gilded Age. Winner of the 2014 BookBrowse Award for Nonfiction.
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.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Jason Gurley, author of Eleanor
To the Bright Edge of the World is a glorious feast of American mythology. ... Gorgeously written, utterly un-put-downable, To the Bright Edge of the World sweeps its reader to the very brink of known territory, and presents that bright edge in start relief: gleaming, serrated, unforgiving. ... a magical, breathtaking novel that I just cannot put out of my mind.
