We are just cruising through books, lately. Again, we’ve sort of changed up our schedule to accommodate a special 100th episode retrospective. So, today, we are forging ahead with a new book. This one is BLACK WOODS BLUE SKY BY Eowyn Ivy. One of our recent authors, Louise Erdrich, blurbed this book saying, “BLACK WOODS, BLUE SKY 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.” The book’s setting is contemporary Alaska where Birdie, a 26 year old mom, is trying to forge a life for herself and her 6 year old daughter, Emaleen in a small town. When Arthur, a local misfit who spends most of his time alone in his remote cabin, starts frequenting the roadside lodge where Birdie works as a waitress, they strike up an unlikely relationship. And then things get strange! Warning: we are going to be talking about the entire book, so if you don’t want to hear how things get strange, stop the episode now and come back after you’ve read the book! Louise Erdrich calls this book a fable. As Nancy was reading this book, Nancy was trying to figure out whether she thought it was a fable, a myth, magic realism. Nancy fell more on the side of this book being a myth. According to Britannica.com, both fables and myths have personified animals or natural objects. However, fables often end with an explicit moral message. Myths, on the other hand, are less likely to have direct prescriptions for behavior and tend to be specific in time and place and context. Or, you might call the tale one of magic realism because in that genre, fantastical or mythical elements are included in seemingly realistic fiction. However, mostly magic realism is thought of as a Latin American genre. Or, you might call this a folktale, since it spins out a story of bears that have existed for a long time. One of the characters in the book, Syd, tells Emaleen: “Peculiar how similar they are, the stories about bears. All down through the ages. Berserkers and shape-shifters. Wild sows taking in abandoned human babies and raising them as their own. Women falling in love with boars. Girls being abducted by bears and giving birth to their children in mountain caves. Russia, Europe, North America, Japan. Again and again. Did you know, there was a whole line of Danes who believed they were the descendants of bears.” Nancy liked how in the first chapter Eowyn sets the scene that the woods are a scary place and bears are unpredictable and deadly creatures. There are magical elements mentioned, such as fairy rings. She sets the scene that Alaska is a different kind of place than we might be used to. In all these genres, the reader has to suspend disbelief. Linny had no problem suspending disbelief as she read this story. She didn’t give a lot of thought to genre. She read it more like, here’s a boy who experienced a lot of trauma and was imprinted with his bear mother. Linny also thought his biological mother was, perhaps, the young woman who lived in the remote cabin. Nancy read the book more as magical realism. She first got an inkling this was not an ordinary contemporary fiction book when Warren digs up a living bear pelt and puts it on to understand how his son felt. It didn’t make a lot of sense to her at first, but the author slowly unveils what is happening. Linny started to understand Arthur was a bear when his face had the same scars as the bear pelt did. Linny didn’t feel sorry for Arthur and she didn’t think the author wanted us to. She felt he found human love and that transformed him a bit. But, we weren’t in his head much. Nancy agreed we never were in his point of view. He is a mysterious character. Nancy thought he was a tragic character and she felt sorry for him because she thought he couldn’t achieve the life he wanted with Birdie and Emaleen. He couldn’t become, for love, the man he wanted to become. Linda thought he just wanted to be a bear. Nancy thought he killed Birdie, he was unable to control his wild nature and that depressed him, which was the condition Emaleen found him in. Nancy thought Arthur’s dad, Warren, was a fascinating character. He found and brought home Arthur, but when it becomes clear that Arthur is not a normal child, his wife has already fallen in love with him. Warren has a lot of foreboding about Arthur and Birdie’s relationship, partially because of Arthur’s previous mauling of a family friend. Linda completely understood the mom’s commitment to Arthur. She believed Warren did love Arthur and had the hope that Birdie’s love could change him. His wife’s love and devotion had brought Arthur to the person who was okay in civilization. Nancy felt it was a sad story, ultimately. Linda thought it was a sad story for Warren. Nancy loved that, at the end of the book, we get to know Emaleen as a young adult. She liked how Emaleen doesn’t remember everything or everyone, which Nancy thought was realistic. Some things, she sort of remembered, or looked wrong to her. Other things she didn’t remember at all. Some things she remembered the feel of. Her memory of Arthur being a bear as been disabused through years of therapy, but then, of course, she realizes she remembered that correctly. Linda likes how Emaleen’s bonding with Arthur carried through to her adulthood and she was safe with him. Emaleen, in fact, was safe with him in a way Birdie was not. Emaleen did give him a lot of distance. Nancy thought Birdie wanted to have the same relationship with Arthur as a human or as a bear and that Emaleen was more accepting of his different forms. Linda liked when Emaleen was unsure whether to disclose when she saw Arthur become a bear. Linda thought Birdie knew about Arthur being a bear and was in denial. Nancy thought it would have been a big leap to conclude your boyfriend is a bear. Nancy tried to suss out whether there was a moral to this story. She kept bouncing between “Don’t expect someone to be who they’re not.” This was Arthur’s mom talking about Arthur to Warren, who several times in the books says something like, “Remember who he is.” Or maybe the theme is neither parental nor romantic love can’t change someone no matter how much you think it can. Or, that nature is stronger than nurture. Linda liked the theme of love, commitment, and bonding in the book. Emaleen and Arthur’s bonding is strong as was Arthur’s and his bear mom. Nancy thought Arthur saw Birdie in a way no one else had. He gave her two gifts no one had ever given her before: the tuft of tundra from the mountainside she wanted to visit and time for her away from Emaleen. He also consistently comes around. Linda didn’t think she gave up much to leave because she was unhappy in her waitress job and doesn’t have much money and has to leave Emaleen alone many hours when she is working. The idea of living off the land and being free was appealing to her. Plus, she was an outdoorsy person who was happy to clean up the cabin and chop wood and live off the land. Overall, Linny liked the book a lot and read it in less than a week. Nancy liked it a lot. She felt it was such a different kind of book. It would be a book she would recommend for someone who is looking for something different. Linny liked being in Alaska. She liked the vividness of the description.