Close Read: Black Woods Blue Sky

Eowyn Ivey's most recent work

Spoilers below.

If you want to read the book first, go do that. Take your own notes as you read—what stands out, questions you are left with, the uses of POV, dialogue, setting, what you see as themes, the title…

Or review this post, read the book, return and leave a comment.

Some time ago, I thoroughly enjoyed and posted a close read of Eowyn Ivey’s earlier novel, The Snow Child.

A Close Read: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

I focused on the quality of the emotional over the sentimental in that work.

Quick summation for Black Woods… The main character is twenty-six year old Birdie, single mother to six year old Emaleen. The setting is a small community in Alaska, where Birdie works at Wolverine Lodge for gruffly maternal Della. And where Birdie falls for the rather awkward Arthur. Arthur’s adopted father Warren is a retired State trooper and pilot. He flies and brings supplies and connection with the outside world when mother and daughter move into Arthur’s wilderness cabin, which seems idyllic in many ways. Until it isn’t.

It’s a story of nature. There is a sense of fearsome inevitability to the story. Warren knows his son is not wholly human. Yet he feels that love has the strength to overcome.

I’ll leave it at that. It’s a beautiful story, well wrought. I hope you are able to spend your own time with it.

Once…

To learn the most—to give the book time to teach me—I need to read more than once. I also need to own, to underline and mark up.

I was aware, through the first read, of shifts in time. I was aware that at the three-quarter mark, the reader is moved forward by about fifteen years. Several factors smooth this transition.