Top

We have updated our Privacy Policy Please take a moment to review it. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the terms of our updated Privacy Policy.

Black Woods, Blue Sky

On sale

11th February 2025

Price: £20

Select a format

Selected: Hardcover / ISBN-13: 9781472279040

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

A heartstopping and beautifully original reworking of Beauty and the Beast set in contemporary Alaska, from the internationally bestselling author of The Snow Child.

‘I read with my heart in my mouth, filled with wonder’ Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

‘Dazzling and moving’ Tiffany McDaniel, author of Betty

Birdie’s keeping it together, of course she is. So she’s a little hungover on her shifts, and has to bring her daughter to the lodge while she waits tables, but Emaleen never goes hungry. It’s a tough town to be a single mother, and Birdie just needs to get by.

And then Birdie meets Arthur, who is quieter than most men, but makes her want to listen; who is gentle with Emaleen, and understands Birdie’s fascination with the mountains in whose shadow they live. When Arthur asks Birdie and Emaleen to leave the lodge and make a home, just the three of them, in his off-grid cabin, Birdie’s answer, in a heartbeat, is yes.

Out in the wilderness Birdie’s days are harsher and richer than she ever imagined possible. Here she will feel truly at one with nature. Here she, and Emaleen, will learn the whole, fearful truth about Arthur.

Reviews

Geraldine Brooks, author of YEAR OF WONDERS and HORSE
No one writes like Eowyn Ivey. Her voice is as enchanting as it is original and Black Woods, Blue Sky may be her best novel yet. A compelling story of love and forgiveness, it is also a page turner, creating a sense of foreboding in the vast Alaskan landscape that Ivey evokes with such passion and precision
Tiffany McDaniel, author of BETTY and ON THE SAVAGE SIDE
Written with love for the Alaskan landscape, Black Woods, Blue Sky is a dazzling and moving journey into the reaches of the wilderness and the reaches of the human heart. Ivey's prose is pure and authentic, drawing you in to the richness of these characters and their lives. This one will stay with you.
Louise Erdrich, author of THE NIGHTWATCHMAN and THE ROUND HOUSE
What a book - I am still enthralled and haunted. 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
Rachel Joyce, bestselling author of MRS BENSON'S BEETLE
Entrancing, tender, bold and beautifully strange: in Black Woods, Blue Sky, Eowyn Ivey does again what she does so brilliantly. Out of myth she weaves a beautiful contemporary story to delight the senses, and keep us turning, page by page, to the astounding end. She makes us think about the space where man becomes nature, and how we only learn when we listen to the world beyond our own. I read with my heart in my mouth and filled with wonder. This is a very special book.