Review 238: Legends of the North Cascades

Legends of the North Cascades by Jonathan Evison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve been binge watching the television show Alone and this book seemed to fit right in with the theme, wilderness survival. Perhaps I have seen too much of that show as I was a bit critical of the survival methods in this book, but that wasn’t the point. This is about a man, Dave Cartwright, with PTSD from serving too many tours in Iraq. He’s finally done with his service, comes home and his marriage is falling apart. Yet at one point they have a long, long talk and things are better and now they are having a baby.

In the present time for the main story the baby, Bella is seven, nearly eight years old, and they just lost the glue of the family. Dave doesn’t handle this one more loss well and gives up on society, thinks that everyone has everything wrong and what we need is to return to nature, to feel what is real. So he takes his daughter into the mountains, the North Cascades to live. Dave found a cave that is secure, they go to town for supplies and library books.

Meanwhile Bella “hears” or “understands” this life from a long time ago, a woman S’tka and her life, starting as S’tka and her husband were kicked out of the clan. Then she is pregnant. S’tka and her family end up at moments mirroring what is going on with Dave and Bella.

In town, Dave’s brother and family, have a hard time with letting him just go live in the woods with a young girl. A social worker hikes out to visit them, a ranger. Dave’s brother takes custody for a while. There are brief snippets from people in town about what they thought about “Cave Dave”.

The chapters are short, and we have Bella's point of view as well. Having the little bits from the town people ultimately did not add anything to the story. At first, I wasn’t sure where the ancient people’s stories were going, why was it added into the novel, but with the mirroring aspect it does add another layer to the overall story. It has its own tale to tell, about being alone in the world separated from your community and what it takes to survive.


Thanks to Algonquin Books and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.