Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey

Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey

11 hours, 34 minutes

Read by Rebecca Lowman

Published February 2025 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

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.

My Thoughts: 

In 2021, I read Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child and was enchanted by it. I use the word "enchanted" because the book employed magical realism, something I generally struggle with, but which I loved in that book. Here again, Ivey uses magical realism to tell a story and, once again, I quickly accepted it as a necessity to tell a story that would have been less impactful without it. 

This time, it took a bit more willingness to suspend disbelief and I did have a harder time connecting to Birdie than I did the characters in The Snow Child. Life's been hard for Birdie; her mother walked out on her when she was a child and she's raising a child on her own; but it was hard for me to buy in to the idea that she was a good mother. Taking off to live with a man she hardly knew, in a remote place she had never been to seemed the height of irresponsibility to me even though I knew that she saw it as a fresh start and a chance to show Emaleen the life she had known as a child. 

The thing is, Arthur has a secret and is not at all who Birdie thinks he is. She misses all of the signs and ignores all of the warnings. Even when Birdie and Emaleen are flown to Arthur's cabin by his adopted father and Birdie sees how he lives, no warning bells seem to go off. Even so, for a while after the two arrive, things begin to go better. Arthur clearly cares about both of them and Birdie finds herself in love with him. He tries his hardest to be what they need. But, ultimately, it's not in his nature and Birdie's inability to accept that will cost them all. 

I appreciated this one for having an utterly unique storyline, I did come to care very much about Emaleen...and Arthur, for that matter, and Rebecca Lowman's reading is excellent. So, even though I didn't fall in love with this book, I did enjoy it and it made for a nice break from my more conventional reads. 

Life: It Goes On - June 25

Happy Sunday! We are back from our great adventure, although we're on day two of recovery - not much energy yet. We're happy to be back in shorts and sunshine and our own bed, but already planning our next visit to Alaska. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Lucy Foley's latest, The Hunting Party. See below about my reading. 

Watched: A Man Called Otto and Amsterdam on the plane rides. 

Read: Some of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America and some of Caroline O'Donoghue's The Rachel Incident. Honestly, I thought I'd do a lot more reading on those long flights; but I found that I was better distracted by movies and I slept a good chunk of the time on the way up. 

Made: Nothing for a full week except some toast for breakfasts. 

Top Row: Eagle River Nature Center, moose we saw 15 minutes from Mini-me's house, Matanuska Glacier (we did get closer later); Middle Row: Ridge view from above Eagle River (we could faintly see Denali 240 miles away), Alaska Sea Life Center sea lion exhibit, Hobart Glacier; Bottom Row: Aialik Glacier (it's 1 mile across and there was a massive amount of ice in the cove from calving), sea lions seen on our boat ride, and the Anchorage Museum (really excellent museum we'll see again when we return)

Enjoyed: Spending a lot of time with my kids (and grand-animals!); a concert by one of Alaska's up and coming bands; seeing a bull and female moose, bald eagles, reindeer, sea otters, sea lions, 3 kinds of puffins, jellyfish, and 3 humpback whales (checked that off my bucket list!); seeing five glaciers (we are a quarter mile away from the glaciers on the water); lots of hiking and so many mountains and incredible views; visiting a fantastic museum; and some really great food and beer. Your girl here even tried a yak burger and reindeer sausage! 

This Week I’m:  

Planning: My while-we-were-away houseguests left my house in excellent condition and we're fully unpacked and laundry is caught up so I'm ready to get back to projects around here. First up is The Big Guy's great-grandmother's table, which needs some sanding and then just some oil or wax. Project Clear Out The House will also get back up and running. 

Thinking About: All of the little details of our trip. I meant to journal as we went but just didn't find the time so I'm writing like crazy this weekend so I can get it all down before I forget things. 

Feeling: Tired but so relaxed. A week away from home was exactly what I needed. Also, sad. I don't know when we'll get to see Mini-me and Ms. S again and it's always a little depressing to be done with something you've looked forward to for so long. 

Looking forward to: Haven't even looked at my calendar for this week, so I don't know what's on the horizon. 

Question of the week: What's your best tip for getting back in the swing of real life after a big trip? 

Life: It Goes On - February 27

Happy sunny, almost the end of winter, Sunday! Our weather roller coaster is the the upside meaning March is going to come in like a lamb this year. Does that mean that, in an inverse of the old saying, it will go out like a lion? Good golly, I hope not; by the end of March I'm hoping we'll be having some days that make me consider dinner on the patio (yes, we will almost certainly still need to wear jackets to do that and any hot food will cool quickly, still...). 

We did have one day this week that got icy and yer girl here fell in the parking lot at work. Proving that I'm not so old that any fall will mean a broken bone, which is good, I guess. Also, figured out pretty quickly that I was more concerned with how embarrassing it was than whether or not I was actually hurt. Proving that you can be in your sixties and still as worried about what other people think of you as you did when you were a teenager. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I'm finishing up Nine Perfect Strangers today, which I'm now listening to at 1.5x speed, just to get through it before it expires. I really haven't gotten into it and haven't been able to make myself choose to listen to it when I'm not in the car. Next up is Matt Haig's Reasons To Stay Alive, which I should be able to get through this week. 

Watched: I finished season 3 of Emily In Paris, watched the second to last episode of Orange Is The New Black (finally!) and the second to last episode of season 5 of The Crown and we finished season 1 of Wednesday. I finally have The Big Guy convinced to consider the streaming services before mindlessly scrolling through regular television. 

Read: I finished Isaac Fitzgerald's Dirtbag, Massachusetts and Elizabeth Berg's Earth's the Right Place for Love. Next up is Simon Parkin's The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A Painter, A Poet, An Heiress, and A Spy in A World War II British Internment Camp. I discovered that in the NY Times book reviews and it sounded interesting; but, now that I've got the book in my hands, I'm not sure I'm up for something that is bound to be depressing. 

Made: A chicken and vegetable base that one night turned into chicken and dumplings and another night turned into chicken and rice. 

Enjoyed: Book club on Tuesday and dinner with friends around the kitchen table last night. You've gotta love the kind of company that means you can wear your slippers. 

This Week I’m:  

Planning: 40 Bags In 40 Days started Wednesday and we're off to a slow start. Yesterday I started work on the basement and that will continue much of the rest of the time. I've got a plan for what I want things to look like when we're all done and a plan to get us there. Now if I can just keep BG moving forward! 

Thinking About: We booked our tickets to Alaska this week so now I'm thinking about what things we'll do, what things we'll take, what things I need to buy before we leave. 

Feeling: Excited. See above. One of the things we'll do is to take one of the boat tours for whale watching; I've wanted to see a whale for most of my life and I can't wait. 

Looking forward to: Seeing Miss H next weekend. 

Question of the week: Both of our girls will celebrate their birthdays on Wednesday. Miss H is easy to shop for but Ms S is tougher since they live in such a small house and it's so expensive to ship things to her. What would you choose for a woman who's turning 35?

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Published February 2012 by Little, Brown and Company

386 pages

Publisher's Summary:

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart — he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone — but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. 

This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

My Thoughts:

I think I may have owned this book since 2012 so when one of my book club's selections for 2021 was a fairy tale book, I opted to go with this fairy tale retelling. And why had I put it off for almost 10 years? Because it has "snow" in its title and in the winter I don't want to read about snow and cold and when summer arrives I don't want to read about snow and cold. Yeah, I know, a silly reason to put off a reading a book I clearly had wanted to read because I'd paid actually money for it. 

"It was beautiful, Mabel knew, but it was a beauty that ripped you open and scoured you clean so that you were left helpless and exposed if you lived at all."

Now I'm finding myself wondering which other books on my shelves have I put off reading for equally silly reasons, depriving myself of enjoyable reading experiences. Because, despite my fears, especially when this book began, that this was going to be dreary, depressing book, it was very much an enjoyable reading experience. 

Author Robert Goolrick said of The Snow Child, "If Willa Cather and Gabriel Garcia Marquez had collaborated on a book, THE SNOW CHILD would be it. It is a remarkable accomplishment -- a combination of the most delicate, ethereal, fairytale magic and the harsh realities of homesteading in the Alaskan wilderness in 1918." It's a perfect description of this book but there is also so much more to The Snow Child. It's also a book about marriage, communication, friendship, love, what it means to be a parent, and what family means. 

Jack and Martha are both grieving the loss of their stillborn child but they have never talked to each other about their pain and it's the coldness that has developed in their marriage that I felt almost as much as the coldness of the setting. When winter, new friendships, and Faina arrive, things begin to change between them. When an injury sidelines Jack and Martha must step up to help save what they have built, they finally become a partnership that might be able to survive life in Alaska. I like them both and so wanted them to find each other and what they wanted so desperately. 

Here is another book where an element of magical realism is at play, a thing you know I've struggled with in the past, but again it was done just perfectly for me. Maybe because throughout the book we're never really sure whether magic is at play or if the truth of Faina lies in reality. 

"We never know what's going to happen, do we? Life is always thrown us this way and that. That's where the adventure is. Not knowing where you'll end up or how you'll fare. It's all a mystery and when we say any different, we're just lying to ourselves. Tell me, when have you felt most alive?"

And that is what this book is about at its core - the adventure, the mystery of knowing how things will end up for its characters. For me, this book ended up just perfectly. 

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
Read by Julia Whelan
Published February 2018 by St. Martin's Press
Source: my audiobook copy checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:
Alaska, 1974. Ernt Allbright came home from the Vietnam War a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes the impulsive decision to move his wife and daughter north where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

Cora will do anything for the man she loves, even if means following him into the unknown. Thirteen-year-old Leni, caught in the riptide of her parents’ passionate, stormy relationship, has little choice but to go along, daring to hope this new land promises her family a better future.

In a wild, remote corner of Alaska, the Allbrights find a fiercely independent community of strong men and even stronger women. The long, sunlit days and the generosity of the locals make up for the newcomers’ lack of preparation and dwindling resources.

But as winter approaches and darkness descends, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: they are on their own.


My Thoughts:
Confession: I have never read a Kristin Hannah book before. Not even The Nightingale, which everyone has read. Why not? I can't really recall what put me off her books; probably something that someone I respect said about her writing or one of her books. And I don't know when this happened; but somewhere along the way, I got it into my head that most stories can be told in 400 pages or less. So maybe the size of Hannah's books as contributed to my reticence.

I got some of what I was excepting from Hannah in this book - a novel that could have been edited down about 40 or 50 pages, a story in which there is only black or white, and a fair amount of emotional manipulation. And the other hand, I got what I was expecting from Hannah in this book, characters I found myself caring about and some twists to the book that took the story in directions I wasn't expecting...in a good way.

Hannah makes sure we don't forget that this book is set in a time when women did not have the options and the rights we have now. In 1974, Hannah reminds us, women couldn't even get credit cards or bank accounts without a man signing for her. Which leaves very few options for a woman who finds herself needing to break away from her husband, even if she were emotionally capable of doing so, which Cora was not.

Hannah's family owns a travel lodge in Alaska so she clearly knows what she's talking about when she describes the beauty of the state, the challenges faced by those who live there, and the battle between those who preferred Alaska to remain untouched and those who wanted to make it more accessible for tourists. She sort of skates over the second of those, uses the third in a fairly predictable way, but oh my, does she do a marvelous job making readers see what draws people to settle in a place that is so harsh and inhospitable so much of the time.

I chose this book for my book club to read this year and read it now as a pre-read to make sure it was one that will work for us. There are some triggers in this book that readers should be aware of including abuse, quite a lot of violence, and murder. But I do think it will make a good book club choice, partly because of those triggers, partly because of the flaws, partly because of the setting and time period, and partly because of the characters. I'll let you know what the others think of it once they read it as well.

I would recommend the audiobook version of this book - Whelan does a fine job of reading it.

At some point, I imagine that I will read Hannah's The Nightingale so I can see what all of the buzz was about. Maybe then, I'll be able to decide if her writing works for me or not.