Trauma destroys the lives of those who have lived through devastating events but it also impacts the lives of the people around the trauma victim.
Legends of the North Cascades tells the story of two beings whose trauma leads them to isolate from society, each with a child they determine to protect. But isolating from society does not bring healing, and their post traumatic disorder worsens.
Dave hoped for a football scholarship but it eluded him; with few choices he enlisted in the Marines. He knew that on the field he was a determined, hard worker, a quick thinker whose insight made up for his slender size. He loved his country and he wanted to travel and to make a difference.
But after three tours in Iraq, Dave had lost his illusions. He returned home psychologically damaged to struggle on his own. His marriage floundered. They thought a child could change things, and during pregnancy they did join in expectation and joy. With Bella's birth, their problems worsened.
When his wife suddenly dies, Dave decides to take Bella to live in the North Cascades. He owed money and was going to lose the house. It was time to give up fitting into 'normal.' He and Bella would live off the land where they would be safe from the human world.
At first, Bella was happy and Dave was well organized and directed. Bella resisted attempts to bring her back into town. But over time, Dave's mental health deteriorated and Bella grapples with estrangement and loneliness.
Thousands of years before Dave and Bella came to the North Cascades, S'tka refused to join her clan when they migrate into the unknown lands beyond the mountains. As a female, she had suffered under male power, allowed to starve while pregnant and raped. She gives birth to N'ka and does everything she could to protect him. But her son grew up and pushed to find others, to expand his world. His mother insisted that others brought pain and put their lives at risk.
Jonathan Evison uses the two timelines to illustrate the universality of human experience, the worst and the best of society, and the damage we inflict on others.
The children show great bravery and openness to finding the good in the world.
Evison has written,
I believe in the power of stories to transform. I still think the novel is the greatest empathic window ever devised by humankind, and I think it would be a better world if everybody read at least one novel per week. Way better than if they watched Mad Men. Or played Farmville. I have one theme: reinvention. I believe people can change. I believe most people want to. I believe in forgiveness, forbearance, generosity, and humor in the face adversity. (https://s3.amazonaws.com/algonquin.site.features/revisedfundamentals/about-jonathan-evison.html)
Legends of the North Cascade offers unforgettable characters and a transformative story that will wring your heart and mend it again.
I received an advanced reading copy from the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.
by Jonathan Evison
Algonquin Books
Pub Date June 8, 2021
ISBN: 9781643750101
hardcover 26.95 (USD)
from the publisher
Dave Cartwright used to be good at a lot of things: good with his hands, good at solving problems, good at staying calm in a crisis. But on the heels of his third tour in Iraq, the fabric of Dave’s life has begun to unravel. Gripped by PTSD, he finds himself losing his home, his wife, his direction. Most days, his love for his seven-year-old daughter, Bella, is the only thing keeping him going. When tragedy strikes, Dave makes a dramatic decision: the two of them will flee their damaged lives, heading off the grid to live in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.
As they carve out a home in a cave in that harsh, breathtaking landscape, echoes of its past begin to reach them. Bella retreats into herself, absorbed by visions of a mother and son who lived in the cave thousands of years earlier, at the end of the last ice age. Back in town, Dave and Bella themselves are rapidly becoming the stuff of legend—to all but those who would force them to return home.
As winter sweeps toward the North Cascades, past and present intertwine into a timeless odyssey. Poignant and profound, Legends of the North Cascades brings Jonathan Evison’s trademark vibrant, honest voice to bear on an expansive story that is at once a meditation on the perils of isolation and an exploration of the ways that connection can save us.
"A beautifully rendered and cinematic portrait of a place and its evolution through time . . . A story of survival and the love and devotion between parent and child.”—Jill McCorkle, author of Hieroglyphics
