• Black Woods, Blue Sky

  • A Novel
  • By: Eowyn Ivey
  • Length: 11 hrs

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Black Woods, Blue Sky

By: Eowyn Ivey
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Publisher's summary

New York Times bestselling author Eowyn Ivey returns to the mythical Alaskan landscape of her Pulitzer Prize finalist The Snow Child with an unforgettable reimagining of Beauty and the Beast that asks the question: Can love save us from ourselves?

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. It’s a tough place to be a single mother, but at least Emaleen never goes hungry. 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 a vast wilderness, hundreds of miles from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic: Together they catch salmon, pick berries, and swim in sunlit waters. But soon Birdie realizes that she is not at all ready for the dark secret that Arthur is harboring in the Alaskan wilderness that is as mysterious and dangerous as it is beautiful.

Black Woods, Blue Sky is a novel with life-and-death stakes, about the love between a mother and daughter, and the allure of a wild life—about what we gain and what it might cost us.

©2025 Eowyn Ivey (P)2025 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“What a book—I am still enthralled and haunted. Bear Story is a fable about what it is to love, a tale of longing, a call to renew our deepest bonds with the living world. It will draw you along like a fast-moving stream, and you will find yourself in places you have never been.”—Louise Erdrich, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Night Watchman and National Book Award–winning author of The Round House

“A stunning tale told by a master of her craft. Bear Story is what skilled storytelling is supposed to be.”—Jason Mott, National Book Award winning author of Hell of a Book, and New York Times bestselling author of The Returned

“No one writes like Eowyn Ivey. Her voice is as enchanting as it is original and Black Woods, Blue Sky may be her best novel yet. A compelling story of love and forgiveness, it is also a page turner, creating a sense of foreboding in the vast Alaskan landscape that Ivey evokes with such passion and precision.”—Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize winning author of March, and New York Times bestselling author of Horse

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