Welcome to the blog tour for the Legends of the North Cascades by. Jonathan Evison!

My Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

Title: Legends of the North Cascades

Author: Jonathan Evison

Format: ebook and paperback

Pages: 352

Publication Date: 6/8/21

Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Categories: Fiction, PTSD, Survival, Mental Health

Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.**

Dave Cartwright has had enough. After three tours in Iraq he has come home to Vigilante Falls in Washington State only to find that he feels incapable of connecting to the people and the place that once defined him. 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: he will take Bella to live in a cave in the wilderness of the North Cascades.

So begins a compelling adventure, a story of a father and daughter attempting to cope with a breathtaking but harsh environment. Once they are settled in the cave, Bella retreats into a different world, that of a mother and son who had lived in that same space, but thousands of years before, at the end of last Ice Age. As the two dramas begin to merge, a timeless odyssey unfolds, both as a meditation on the perils of isolation and an exploration of humans’ indelible struggle to survive.

Perfect for readers of Peter Heller’s novels or Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone, Legends of the North Cascades is Jonathan Evison’s return to sweeping, multicharacter narratives like his New York Times bestseller West of Here and is an immensely satisfying read. 

• I don’t read a lot of survival stories but when I was asked to be on the blog tour, I thought to give this one a chance. This one did not disappoint me. I found it intriguing as we meet Dave and he takes his daughter to the mountains to live in isolation.
• Dave is living with PTSD after three tours in Iraq. He doesn’t know how to function back at home without having the trauma of war affect him and his loved ones so he makes a decision to leave it all behind and retreat into the wilderness with his daughter. What scared me was his daughter Bella toughing it out with him. He teaches her to survive but barely and when something happens where the roles are reversed he realizes what his decision may have cost him.
• Bella is a loving daughter who has already lost her mother and doesn’t want to lose her dad. So she follows him. The one good thing that came out of their time in the wilderness is Bella did learn how to survive.
• There were accounts in the book from the people in the community, sort of like a documentary at times. We heard from Dave’s brother-in-law, the ranger and others into Dave’s mindset and maybe when they realized things went wrong for him.

Trigger: scenes from war, injury, PTSD, depression, grief

• The story jumps a lot from Dave’s present, his past, the accounts from community members and then a story that Bella experiences through memories of Ice Age people that lived in the cave she and her dad live in. The Ice Age story ~ though I can see it’s parallel to Dave/Bella’s story, took me out of the story at times.
• I was so frustrated with Dave but I understood he needed help also. But as a mom, I was about to march up there and get Bella from the mountain.

This is the first book I’ve read from this author and it’s not usually the kind of book I tend to read. I found the story to be a quick read. It was also an emotional story about a father and daughter living in isolation. I felt the setting of the Cascades really captured how Dave felt isolated in his suffering with PTSD after his tour of duties in Iraq. The parallel Ice Age story didn’t quite keep my interest until the ending when Dave and Bella’s time on the mountain becomes a dangerous situation. I think that is when both stories confronted the issues of guilt, grief and anger the main characters were feeling. Overall, I found it to be a captivating story.

📖 ~ Yolanda

*****

Early Praise for Legends of the North Cascades

“Evison’s majestic and panoramic latest conjures the beauty, power, and unforgiving nature of the Cascade Mountains in alternating narratives separated by thousands of years. Evison masterfully delivers a subtle yet pointed commentary on how society marginalizes veterans and how we profess to admire yet distrust the individualist ethos while also offering a profound meditation on the human spirit.”

—Booklist (starred)

“Engaging . . . This modern back-to-the-land story feels like John Krakauer’s Into the Wild meets Jean M. Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear, a combination that makes for a compelling read in its appreciation of the monumental properties of nature and recognition of the history of humans in the North Cascades.”

—Library Journal

“Evison (Lawn Boy) delivers an intimate . . . story of grief and parenthood with characters from two distant millennia . . . Evison’s empathetic vision offers much to consider about the limits of parental authority and the capacity for both physical and emotional survival.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Evison weaves the prehistoric past and the troubled present together with imagination and tenderness in this haunting, timely meditation on the redemptive power of love.”

—Hillary Jordan, author of Mudbound

“Jonathan Evison’s Legends of the North Cascades is a beautifully rendered and cinematic portrait of a place and its evolution through time; it is also—pure and simple—a story of survival and the love and devotion between parent and child.”

—Jill McCorkle, author of Hieroglyphics

“Under the daunting and impassive mountains of the title, two dramas, one ancient and one contemporary, intertwine to become a greater story of parent and child attempting to survive in the harshest of circumstances. For me, the heart of this fine novel is Bella, a young heroine whose courage and steadfastness are a timely reminder of how human decency can prevail in the darkest of situations.”

—Ron Rash, author of Serena and In the Valley

“Only a writer of Evison’s talent could so brilliantly weave the struggles of a PTSD-stricken veteran and the ghosts of an ancient family into such a powerful social commentary. Wildly original and breathtakingly big-hearted.”

—Willy Vlautin, author of Don’t Skip Out on Me

Praise for West of Here

“ An enjoyable, meaty read—a vision of a place told through the people who find themselves at

the edge of America’s idea of itself.” 

—Los Angeles Times

“ Riotously funny … Wonderfully charming.” 

—The New York Times Book Review

“ West of Here has it all. It’s a literary page-turner of epic sweep and elegant syntax.”

—Louisville Courier-Journal

“ [A] big, booming ruckus of a novel … Evison is a tremendously gifted storyteller.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

Praise for The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving

“ Engaging … The journey is reckless and wild, infused with the sad rage that makes good

comedy great.” 

—The New York Times Book Review

“ Bittersweet … Moving and funny … Refreshing.” 

—The Washington Post

“ Even-keeled, big-hearted, and very funny and full of hope.” 

—The Boston Globe

“ An entertaining picaresque and a moving story of redemption.” 

—The New Yorker

Praise for This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!

“ A book that speaks to all of us … The themes Evison presents—disappointment, delusion,

redemption—are universal, and he deals with them beautifully in this wonderful novel.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“ Infused with Evison’s characteristic empathy and heart and humor.” 

—The Los Angeles Times

“ A quirky, fun writing style pulls you through this wonderful tale.” 

—Sunset Magazine

“ Bittersweet but buoyant, with a heart-tugging finish.” 

—Good Housekeeping

Praise for Lawn Boy

“ Mike Munoz is a Holden Caulfield for a new millennium.” 

—The New York Times Book Review

“ An effervescent novel of hope that can enlighten everyone.” 

—The Washington Post

“ Irresistible … Funny, honest, and real.” 

—Seattle Times

“ Evison’s voice is pure magic … In Lawn Boy, at once a vibrant coming of age novel and a sharp social commentary on class, Evison offers a painfully honest portrait of one young man’s struggle to overcome the hand he’s been dealt in life and reach for his dreams. It’s a journey you won’t want to miss, with an ending you won’t forget.” 

—Kristin Hannah, author of The Great Alone