A fascinating historical tale blends with a moving love story in the wilds of Alaska, reviewer Mike Crowl writes.
TO THE BRIGHT EDGE OF THE WORLD
Eowyn Ivey
Hachette
By MIKE CROWL
In the winter of 1885, Lieutenant Colonel Allen Forrester is given the task of exploring part of the newly acquired territory of Alaska. He sets out with two army men, a prospector who knows something of the land, and a few Indians. They're later joined by an Indian woman and a half-wild dog.
Their job is to find a route up the mostly frozen Wolverine River, drawing maps and making contact with the local Indian tribes. The journey takes immense courage and resolve, and often leaves them in a poor state of health.
Just before Forrester departs, he learns that his young wife, Sophie, is pregnant. With almost no communication by mail, he's left to wonder how she's faring, and whether the baby has been born safely.
Sophie, who's living in a small house in the army barracks, is a strong-willed young lady who doesn't take kindly to being told she must sit at home and play the housewife. She's an amateur ornithologist, and during the course of the story takes up photography in order to be able to photograph birds in their natural habitats.
The bulk of the book consists of interweaved entries from the diaries Forrester and Sophie keep. The entries aren't always presented in sync; sometimes we know more than one or other of the characters does. A series of letters between two people from the present is also included: one is a young man in charge of a museum in Alaska, and the other is a retired man whose family inherited the diaries.
This book is fiction, but is so well researched and written that it could easily be taken for fact (I checked online more than once to confirm that it wasn't).
Ivey invests huge warmth, integrity, and courage in her characters, and the ongoing love story between Forrester and Sophie, even though conducted at a distance, is very moving. The vast and almost alien country is depicted in detail, and the difficult life the Indians themselves endure in what is their native territory is sobering.
The story is more than straightforward and factual. The Indian people are so connected to their land that fantastic events in which the people and the wildlife seem to be one and the same regularly occur.
Women mingling with geese at the water's edge appear to fly away; a baby seems to have been born in the broken trunk of a tree; one tribe takes on the form of ferocious weasel-like animals called wolverines, animals who make human sounds.
But strangest of all is the evil old man who can seemingly turn into a raven, and who brings disaster wherever he goes.
Ivey allows herself plenty of room to give life to her story, and writes in such a way that this book is a surprising page-turner. Her previous novel, The Snow Child - also set in Alaska - was an international bestseller, and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Mike Crowl is a Dunedin author, musician and composer.
