Candi's Reviews > To the Bright Edge of the World

4.5 stars

“I found myself inadequate in the face of it… I begin to try to comprehend: gray rivers that roar down from the glaciers, mountains and spruce valleys as far as the eye can see. It is a grand, inscrutable wildness. Never are the people here allowed to forget that each of us is alive only by a small thread.”

I had the chance to visit Alaska once, more than twenty years ago now. Such a majestic landscape, almost otherworldly in its uniqueness from anything else I had ever seen before. From the rugged coast and the splendid yet formidable glaciers to the vastness of the interior, I was completely bowled over by the fact that this expanse was actually a piece of our own country. Last month, I had the fortune of visiting this land once more – from the warmth of my living room couch this time around. Between Eowyn Ivey’s rich prose and my own vivid memories, I was able to conjure that sense of awe all over again. My only wish is that I had read this after the holidays, when I could truly wrap myself up in these words without my thoughts running to shopping, baking or any of those tasks required to make the season ‘bright’.

“It doesn’t matter what draws explorers—wealth or fame or military power, or even genuine curiosity—they alter a place just by traveling through it and recording what they see.”

This novel is written as a series of journal and diary entries, letters, newspaper articles and the like. It was a highly effective way to tell a story, allowing the reader to experience firsthand the fear, wonder, joy and sorrow of these characters. Lieutenant Colonel Allen Forrester, along with Lieutenant Andrew Pruitt and Sergeant Bradley Tillman, is tasked with the responsibility of mapping the interior of the Alaskan Territory and gathering information on the native tribes. Sophie, only recently married to Forrester, must forge her own way while anxiously awaiting any news and anticipating the day she can be reunited with her husband. Sophie is a strong woman, both intelligent and independent - traits that were often deemed as rather eccentric for her gender during the 1880s. Besides an adventure tale, this is also a bittersweet kind of love story. Rather than sitting around and pining incessantly for her husband, however, Sophie pairs her favorite pastime of bird watching with a new pursuit of photography. I’m pretty hopeless when it comes to taking pictures, but I’ve always admired this form of art. When not caught up in the perils of traipsing through the remote landscapes of Alaska, I was enthralled with Sophie’s attempts to catch that consummate moment.

“It seems to me now that such a moment requires a kind of trinity: you and I and the thing itself.”

Ivey has a gift of drawing the reader right into her story. You come to know several of these characters intimately. Besides Sophie, I found Andrew Pruitt to be a fascinating individual. Brooding, mysterious, and more the poet and intellectual, Pruitt was out of his element in this place where survival was the primary concern of these men. He would have been more at home sitting in a log cabin beside a warm fire with a book in hand or with a pen to paper. He seemed a man lost and I felt for him more deeply than perhaps anyone else here besides Sophie.

“Cowardice, sickly yellow thing, I found you like worms writhing beneath an overturned rock—I peeled back my self and beheld you at my core where a shining soul should have been.”

Woven throughout the novel are bits of Native American folklore and superstitions. A land so vastly unexplored will naturally evoke a mystical quality, and there are many tales of hauntings, transmogrifications and other strange happenings. Rather than pulling me out of the story as magical realism is wont to do, these elements added an aura that seemed authentic in the context of this time and place.

This is more than simply an adventure tale or a love story or an historical narrative of the exploration and charting of new lands. Above all, To the Bright Edge of the World teaches us to step outside our own boundaries and broaden our minds and our opportunities by using our gifts to the best of our abilities.

“That is the excitement. We catch only glimpses, a burst of movement, a flap of wings, yet it is life itself beating at shadow’s edge. It is the unfolding of potential; all of what we might experience and see and learn awaits us.”