***** 2023 Whistler Independent Book Awards Fiction Winner *****
***** 2022 Chanticleer International Book Awards Literary & Contemporary Fiction Finalist *****
The “achingly beautiful” story of Immortal North concludes in this stunning sequel, an unflinching meditation on the triumph of human resolve.
He’s known as the trapper and his family has a long history in these remote woods. Now it’s just him and the boy, and he’ll raise him in the world he knows, the forest, where threats take recognizable forms: harsh weather, peak predators, the intrusion of civilization at odds with their lifestyle. But for those lands and minds with an unsettled past, other dangers may lurk the woods where father and son hunt the timber. One fateful day their woodland life is violently broken—shouldn’t those guilty of such injustice be held to account?
The aftermath of the first novel becomes too volatile to be contained by the woods, and the town hears of a murder and an abduction—that list of crimes is not getting any shorter. An atmospheric tale both haunting and heartening. A northern tragedy dark enough that even the patch of sky above their old family cabin seems to have lost its stars, but hope and courage have this luminous sequel shining with radiant light.
A father raises his boy in the isolated north. But for those lands and minds with an unsettled past, other dangers may lurk the woods where father and son hunt the timber.
He’s known as the trapper and his family has a long history in these remote woods. Now it’s just him and the boy, and he’ll raise him in the world he knows, the forest, where threats take recognizable forms: harsh weather, peak predators, the encroachment of civilization at odds with their lifestyle. A tale told in captivating prose of wild living, where human skin is no boundary for either the beauty or cruelty of nature. After the arrival of a foreign presence, the forest in all its naked majesty becomes an arena for the dueling forces of life: joy and suffering, good and evil, compassion and vengeance. One fateful day their woodland life is violently broken—shouldn’t those guilty of such injustice be held to account? Though the forest is isolated, this may be a story of the wilderness existing within us all.
Winner of the 2023 Whistler Independent Book Awards in Fiction, a debut novel that Book Sirens calls "Heartbreakingly beautiful, raw and enchanting. ★★★★★"
Tom at seventeen years old, naïve and optimistic, took a bush-plane flight north to remote wilderness and work at an isolated fishing lodge. Only days into the season, confrontations with coworkers escalates into threats on his life. So a young man makes a stand.
In a later year and having gotten his pilot license, Tom’s float plane is screaming down the lake and won’t lift from the surface. He’s run out of liquid runway with no time to power down. The big forest closing in. He crashes...
Chapter by chapter, these memoir stories move from laugh-out-loud accounts, to flushed romances with hearts both swelled and broken, to tales of rapid intensification from imminent threats to Tom’s life—some of them self-imposed. Tom doesn’t invite you to glimpse his world, he straps you into the seat beside him, smiles, and pushes throttle to full. Stories like Twain with scenes set to Krakauer backdrops and words on the page in honest prose like Hemingway--an affectionate yet piercing memoir of northern adventure, wilderness, and love. Thrilling and heart-wrenching, stirring and joyous, Under Big-Hearted Skies is an intimate perspective yet panoramic view of an impassioned life.