Why a Booktrail?
2024: an unforgettable story of the beauty and savagery of the Alaskan wilderness
Black Woods, Blue Sky
What you need to know before your trail
Birdie’s keeping it together, of course she is. So she’s a little hungover on her shifts, and has to bring her daughter to the lodge while she waits tables, but Emaleen never goes hungry. It’s a tough town to be a single mother, and Birdie just needs to get by.
And then Birdie meets Arthur, who is quieter than most men, but makes her want to listen; who is gentle with Emaleen, and understands Birdie’s fascination with the mountains in whose shadow they live. When Arthur asks Birdie and Emaleen to leave the lodge and make a home, just the three of them, in his off-grid cabin, Birdie’s answer, in a heartbeat, is yes.
Out in the wilderness Birdie’s days are harsher and richer than she ever imagined possible. Here she will feel truly at one with nature. Here she, and Emaleen, will learn the whole, fearful truth about Arthur.
Travel Guide
Anchorage
The book is set in the remote parts of Alaska but somewhere not too far from Anchorage
Anchorage is Alaska’s largest city, which is also a gateway to nearby wilderness areas and mountains including the Chugach, Kenai and Talkeetna.
The book is quite vague on actual locations but it’s the remoteness and wildness of it that really captures the imagination!
“From this height, the impressive Wolverine River looked like a small creek, and on the other side she saw the barest glints of metal that had to be the roofs of the lodge and cabins…[s]he had the sensation of slipping out of herself, of inhabiting both places at once—sitting on the picnic table and imagining what it would be like to stand on this mountain ridge, and also standing here and looking down at her old life, and it was as if she soared, breathless and thrilled, in the blue sky between the two.”
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Black Woods, Blue Sky
Destination/location: Alaska Author/guide: Eowyn Ivey Departure Time: 2000s
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