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.
In piecemeal fashion the novel sketches the backstory of a boy who was raised by a mother bear before being taken in by foster parents and has never fully adapted to human ways. Ms. Ivey leaves Arthur’s animal upbringing frustratingly vague, but she finds rich material in Birdie and Emaleen’s dawning understanding of his feral side, and in their tragic attempts to tame it.
Ivey is an enthralling storyteller who paints the Alaskan landscape and its inhabitants with equal affection ... One could quibble with Ivey’s sometimes shaky integration of realistic and supernatural elements, and one vital transition is abrupt. Still, the author weaves the tapestry of her story so deftly, presenting the natural world with respect instead of romanticization, that later developments hit us with devastating force.
Poignant ... Quietly suspenseful, laced with beauty and shot through with darkness, Black Woods, Blue Sky explores the nature of courage, the limits of love, and what happens when nature and civilization collide.
