To the Bright Edge of the World: A Novel

An Amazon Best Book of August 2016: I’m just going to say it: Eowyn Ivey can really write. For those who read The Snow Child this statement comes as no surprise. In To the Bright Edge of the World, her second novel, Ivey manages to turn an adventure set in Alaska into much more. The book begins with a contemporary relative donating to a small museum the journals and other artifacts from an 1885 expedition. The journals were written by his great-uncle, Colonel Alan Forrester, and his great-aunt, Sophie. While we read about Alan’s accounts of his full-on Alaskan adventure, we are also introduced to Sophie’s struggles back in Vancouver. Each experiences a shift in the prism through which they see reality—Sophie takes up photography, and Alan begins to develop a more wild view of the world around him. Read it for the adventure. Read it for the time you’ll spend thinking about it long after you’ve turned the last page. --Chris Schluep, The Amazon Book Review