Black Woods, Blue Sky

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.