To the Bright Edge of the World

by Eowyn Ivey

Ivey’s debut novel, The Snow Child, entranced me when I read it a couple of years ago, so when I discovered that she had published a new novel, I was eager to read it.

To the Bright Edge of the World is a multi-layered tale.  The story opens as a man named Josh, the curator of a small museum in Alpine, Alaska receives a letter from an old man named Walt in Montana, along with a collection of old letters and diaries.  The letters and diaries were written by his great uncle, Lieutenant Colonel Allen Forester, and great aunt,  Sophie.  In the winter of 1885, Lieutenant Colonel Forester left his young pregnant wife, Sophie, to lead an expedition into the wilds of Alaska to map the area of the Wolverine River Valley and gather information for the U.S. Army about the geography and native people.  Alternating between the contemporary correspondence between Walt and Josh – by means of which a friendship grows between these two very different strangers – and the old diaries and letters of Allen and Sophie, this story of love, grief, adventure, and survival is told.

Alternating between the contemporary correspondence between Walt and Josh – by means of which a friendship grows between these two very different strangers – and the old diaries and letters of Allen and Sophie, this story of love, grief, adventure, and survival is told.  During the months-long Alaskan expedition Lieutenant Colonel Forester and his men are subject to harrowing conditions and bizarre, inexplicable incidents, while back home at Vancouver barracks in Washington territory, Sophie makes her way through her own ordeals, ultimately finding solace in photography.

As in The Snow Child, Ivey demonstrates here a gift for the fantastical, where the lines between what is real, what is not real, and what is possible are indiscernible.

A fine work of fiction.