Bear Paw

The April book for Quilt Etc.’s block-of-the-month class is To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey. I was skeptical going in, afraid it would be written by someone ignoring Mark Twain’s sage advice, “Write what you know.” I kind of wish I could unread Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha and Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven; writers who are much better at shoveling crap than they are at actual research. But Ivey clearly knows her subject well. The unique way she’s written this novel leaves the reader with the impression that they know Alaska’s rich history. But while she describes the weather, terrain and cultures with detail, the events in her book and the names of the people and places are all fiction. Like so many other great books, this one whets an appetite for more. Maybe I should find some nonfiction about Vitus Bering, George Vancouver, or Henry Tureman Allen.