This was a last minute addition, and I’m really glad I found it–Casanova does a really nice job with the northern Minnesota setting in her Young Adult novel Frozen. I am reading my way across the USA–5 or so books from each state, with an emphasis on setting–books where the setting is really tangible, and […]
Lake of the Woods is the perfect getaway. Tim O’Brien’s novel is set, in part, in that little bit of land, connected to Manitoba, and separated by the lake from the state of Minnesota of which it is actually a part. … an old yellow cottage in the timber at the edge of Lake of […]
In The Alaskan Laundry by Brendan Jones, the old Tlingit man, Betteryear, teaches the protagonist Tara to gather wild mushrooms and other items, which they use to make a meal together. There are some beautiful passages from this part of the book, describing the food and how it is made, which really bring the setting […]
Since one of the main characters – that of Sophie, Colonel Allen Forrester’s wife – is an amateur naturalist and interested in birds in particular, To the Bright Edge of the World is a treasure trove of bird sightings. Moreover, there are a number of birds that play important roles in the story, both recurring […]
I’ve been trying to find pictures of some of the artifacts mentioned in To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey, and one of the most important – the moose-hide tunic given to the leader of the expedition, Colonel Allen Forrester, by one of the most powerful chiefs (or tyones) of the region […]
The Camp Robber – What a great name! This is one of the first birds that plays an important role in To the Bright Edge of the World, by Eowyn Ivey, and it’s one I hadn’t heard of before – at least not with that particular common name. When I started looking into this bird I […]
When I was a child, my family camped its way across the United States, from New York to the West, three times. Ostensibly, we were going to visit one of my uncles and his family, who lived in Montana, up near the Canadian border not too far from Glacier National Park. In reality, though, we […]