Blog Tour | Legends of the North Cascades by Johnathan Evison

Legends of the North Cascades by Johnathan Evison

Fiction, Contemporary

Algonquin Books | June 8th, 2021

3.5/5 Stars

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.

When Dave’s wife and Bella’s mother gets into a car accident and doesn’t survive, Dave decides to take Bella with him to live off the grid in the mountains of the North Cascades. Dave is over humanity and feels it has nothing left for him. 

These same mountains once homed people centuries before. Bella starts forming kind of mythical bond with these people who were also just trying to find a place where they belonged.

This was a really interesting story. The chapters go between Dave and Bella’s story and the story of people who also once lived in the North Cascades. 

I really enjoyed reading this book and I’m so glad I had the chance to read it and be part of the blog tour.

Thank you, Netgalley and Algonquin Books for this arc in return for an honest review