Legends of the North Cascades, by Jonathan Evison
“And so, as another lean winter beat down upon them, they took refuge and comfort in their stories.”
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One of the reasons I enjoy reading fiction so much is that it’s a way to run through the wild ideas we all have without leaving your couch, or the daily comforts of your life. This book felt to me like the answer to an I wonder what would happen if… scenario of epic, but very personal conditions.
Evison is no stranger to writing character driven stories that feel immense and internal at once. If his name sounds familiar, he wrote Lawn Boy, This is Your Life, Harriet Chance, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, and two other novels.
In Legends of the North Cascades, Evison brings us into the world of Dave Cartwright and his daughter, Bella, as they navigate tremendously unique situations, deal with and learn to confront and grow through personal struggles, and examine relationships with landscape, nature, isolation, and being human.
In this story Dave deals with PTSD after three tours in Iraq. He is struggling to make connections with people and feels isolated, unable to fit in as he feels he should. I would be surprised if we all haven’t had the idea to quit everything and go live in the forrest, and well, Dave decides that very thing might be the solution. He wants to feel in charge of his own life again and frustrated by so much of the goings on of the society around him.
So, after suffering a tremendous loss he makes a big decision and with Bella, his 7 year-old daughter, they go live in a cave in the wilderness of the North Cascades.
Yes, really.
As you can imagine, things aren’t necessarily smooth sailing or as solved as Dave might have initially hoped. The logistics of living in the wilderness, surviving on one’s wits and skills, having a daughter who, at 7, is still significantly young, learning, dealing with loss and expression also, and it is an immense examination of feelings, responses, and interactions with each other, and the world around them.
That alone would make for a compelling read, but when Bella begins to see things, interpreting the paintings on the wall of the cave as the story of a mother and son from the ice age, we see an incredibly intricate and precise overlap of a vast timeline.
In exploring these two time periods, Evison goes deep into themes of isolation, human connection, expression of grief, the daily maintenance of living, and what community love, support, family, empathy, and belonging in ways I found to be new, interesting, and immensely thought provoking.
While I didn’t necessarily agree with Dave’s decisions, and many times was quite worried for them both in logistical survival and for emotional reasons, I appreciate how well Evison writes a flawed and realistic human character in Dave. I appreciate it when a book makes me think, and this will provoke lots of thought, insight, and response from its readers.
Legends of the North Cascades, by Jonathan Evison is out now (as of June 8th 2021) wherever books are sold
**Many thanks to the folks at Algonquin books for my free review copy. All opinions are my own.