Wintering

April 25, 2016
Continuing the saga of the Eide family introduced in his second novel, The Lighthouse Road, Geye’s powerful third outing journeys to the frozen places in the American landscape and the human heart. One November, the elderly Harry Eide, who is suffering from dementia, vanishes into the unforgiving backcountry surrounding his home in the tiny Minnesota town of Gunflint. When his son, Gus, comes to tell Harry’s longtime love, Berit Lovig, the news, Gus also begins recounting another defining trip Harry took into the wilderness three decades earlier. In fall 1963, Harry persuaded then-18-year-old Gus to postpone college and join him on a lengthy two-man journey north into the maze of waterways at the Canadian border, where they planned to winter over like the “voyageurs of yore.” By the time the first snow fell, Gus had come to understand that the maps Harry had brought were useless and that a showdown with Charlie Aas, Gunflint’s corrupt mayor and Harry’s longtime nemesis, might be dead ahead. As Gus recalls his tale, Berit looks back to her own past, most notably with Rebekah Grimm, a Gunflint icon whose history links her to the Eides. Capturing the strength and mystery of characters who seem inextricable from the landscape, Geye’s novel is an unsentimental testament to the healing that’s possible when we confront our bleakest places.

April 1, 2016
A father and son bond through several months of self-exile in the remote borderlands of northern Minnesota. Geye has chosen a complex narrative strategy, one that mirrors the complexity of the relationships he dramatizes. At the center is Gustav "Gus" Eide, who's distraught at the disappearance of his father, Harry. Gus goes to see Berit Lovig, the narrator of the story and Harry's former lover, to tell her the story of another time Harry disappeared, 33 years earlier, in the winter of 1963-64. At that time Harry and 18-year-old Gus take a canoe trip northward, following the treks previously done by ancient voyageurs, whose fierce independence Harry has come to admire. Unbeknownst to Gus, who thinks they're taking their voyage into the wilderness to test themselves, Harry has another motive--to escape the unfortunately named Charlie Aas, a local big man about town but also a bully and the secret lover of Harry's wife, Lisbet. Leaving at the time of year they do, Harry and Gus find the elements lined up against them--ice and snow are among their greatest threats--but Geye is interested in conflicts between men as well as between man and nature, because Harry is convinced that Charlie will be tracking them. And sure enough, eventually Charlie shows up--and he's both angry and aggressive. As Harry and Gus square off against him, the reader feels that civilization is a very good thing indeed. The confrontation is dramatic and violent and leads to a secret father and son share for years. As the story unfolds in the present day, Gus, now a husband and father himself, reveals his intuitions about Harry and Berit's relationship. Reminiscent of Jack London's "To Build a Fire" and Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, Geye's narrative takes us deep into both human and natural wilderness.

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May 15, 2016
Ostensibly, Geye's (The Lighthouse Road, 2012) beautifully written third novel seems most suited to male readers, given its many pages devoted to a father and teenage son spending weeks in the wildernessthe headwaters of the Mississippi on the border between the U.S. and Canada, to be preciseand to presenting lush details of camping and trekking and living rugged in the woods. But the author's outdoor prose is supported by immaculately conceived characters any fiction appreciator will respond to as well as by Geye's instinctive sense of narrative movement. Gustav Eide relates to Berit Lovig, his father's long-patient admirer, what exactly happened three decades ago when he and his father went deep into the Minnesota wilderness on an expedition that Gus cannot make sense of initially. What Gus eventually discerns is that a long-simmering feud has existed between his father and another man prominent in town, which now promises to break out into open warfare. The relatively small and closed community is Geye's perfect laboratory for exploring human nature, especially male bonding and competitiveness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)