
Black Woods, Blue Sky
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Rebecca Lowman
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By:
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Eowyn Ivey
About this listen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Snow Child returns to the mythical landscapes of Alaska with an unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks the question: Can love save us from ourselves?
“No one writes like Eowyn Ivey.”—Geraldine Brooks
“You will find yourself in places you have never been.”—Louise Erdrich
“Ivey is an enthralling storyteller.”—The New York Times Book Review
Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover, sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.
Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie, he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well.
Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains, on the far side of the Wolverine River.
It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic and she can picture a happily ever after: Together they catch salmon, pick berries, and climb mountains so tall it’s as if they could touch the bright blue sky. But soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have ever imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.
Black Woods, Blue Sky is a novel with life-and-death stakes, about the love between a mother and daughter, and the allure of a wild life—about what we gain and what it might cost us.
©2025 Eowyn Ivey (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Ivey is an enthralling storyteller who paints the Alaskan landscape and its inhabitants with equal affection. Her empathy for her characters doesn’t falter . . . [Ivey] weaves the tapestry of her story so deftly, presenting the natural world with respect instead of romanticization, that later developments hit us with devastating force.”—New York Times Book Review
“Black Woods, Blue Sky is an original work of art that only Ivey’s imaginative powers, deep knowledge of Alaska and its beings, and commitment to depicting the real, loving, and often confused lives of her characters could create.”—Anchorage Daily News
“With lush and visceral prose, [Ivey] makes you feel tossed about by the chaos and violence of the story just as much as you’re held still by its tender, hopeful moments. It’s a beautiful and haunting story that sits with the complexity of consequences, the limits and endurance of love, and blurry lines between reality and myth.”—Condé Nast Traveler
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Story
South London, 1981: Daphne is the only Black girl in her class. All she wants is to keep her head down, preferably in a book. The easiest way to survive is to go unnoticed. Daphne’s attempts at invisibility are upended when a boy named Connie Small arrives from Jamaica. Connie is the opposite of small in every way: lanky, outgoing, and unapologetically himself. Daphne tries to keep her distance, but Connie is magnetic, and they form an intense bond.
By: Lisa Smith
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The Garden
- By: Nick Newman
- Narrated by: Nicolette McKenzie
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In a place and time unknown, two elderly sisters live in a walled garden, secluded from the outside world. Evelyn and Lily have only ever known each other. What was before the garden, they have forgotten; what lies beyond it, they do not know. Each day is spent in languid service to their home: tending the bees, planting the crops, and dutifully following the instructions of the almanac written by their mother. So when a nameless boy is found hiding in the boarded house at the center of their isolated grounds, their once solitary lives are irrevocably disrupted.
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Disappointing
- By Susan L. Houser on 03-28-25
By: Nick Newman
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The Antidote
- A Novel
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Elena Rey, Sophie Amoss, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell comes a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories.
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1935 Nebraska Dustbowl drama with a Supernatural twist.
- By CarolynL on 03-16-25
By: Karen Russell
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Wild Dark Shore
- A Novel
- By: Charlotte McConaghy
- Narrated by: Cooper Mortlock, Katherine Littrell, Saskia Maarleveld, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.
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Good, but not awesome.
- By Shannon on 05-03-25
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Into the Forest
- By: Jean Hegland
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
As America collapses in the chaos of war, pollution, and bankruptcy, two sisters pool their resources to survive alone in the hills above San Francisco. Although dwindling food and increasing isolation threaten them, they soon find a more immediate danger standing at their door. When a young man arrives, his friendship offers tantalizing fulfillment, but his love threatens to divide the sisters.
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Depressing, boring, & disturbing
- By The Ropers on 07-14-16
By: Jean Hegland
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A House for Miss Pauline
- A Novel
- By: Diana McCaulay
- Narrated by: Sasha Frost
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When the stones of her house begin to rattle and shift and call out mysterious messages to her in the middle of the night, Pauline Sinclair, age ninety-nine, knows she will not make it to her one-hundredth birthday. She has lived a modest life in Mason Hall, a rural Jamaican village, educating herself with stolen books, raising her two children, surviving by becoming a successful ganja farmers in the area, and experiencing both deep passion and true loss with her beloved baby father, Clive. Behind this seemingly benign façade, however, Miss Pauline has buried many secrets.
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All the feels !
- By M on 06-27-25
By: Diana McCaulay
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River East, River West
- A Novel
- By: Aube Rey Lescure
- Narrated by: David Shih, Jennifer Lim
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Shanghai, 2007: Fourteen-year-old Alva has always longed for more. Raised by her American expat mother, she’s never known her Chinese father, and is certain a better life awaits them in America. But when her mother announces her engagement to their wealthy Chinese landlord, Lu Fang, Alva’s hopes are dashed, and so she plots for the next best thing: the American School in Shanghai.
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Did not connect with the characters
- By Maryanne T. on 04-18-24
By: Aube Rey Lescure
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Heartwood
- By: Amity Gaige
- Narrated by: Justine Lupe, Alma Cuervo, Rebecca Lowman, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground.
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The suspense
- By Amy B. McVey on 04-11-25
By: Amity Gaige
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The Jackal's Mistress
- A Novel
- By: Chris Bohjalian
- Narrated by: Marni Penning, Chris Bohjalian
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Virginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.
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Just ok
- By Gwen on 03-20-25
By: Chris Bohjalian
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The Girls from Corona del Mar
- A novel
- By: Rufi Thorpe
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Mia and Lorrie Ann are lifelong friends: hard-hearted Mia and untouchably beautiful, kind Lorrie Ann. While Mia struggles with a mother who drinks, a pregnancy at 15, and younger brothers she loves but can’t quite be good to, Lorrie Ann is luminous, surrounded by her close-knit family, immune to the mistakes that mar her best friend’s life. Then a sudden loss catapults Lorrie Ann into tragedy: things fall apart, and then fall further - and there is nothing Mia can do to help.
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Friendship and Perception
- By FanB14 on 04-21-15
By: Rufi Thorpe
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Days of Light
- By: Megan Hunter
- Narrated by: Stephanie Racine
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of The End We Start From, now a major film starring Jodie Comer, and taking inspiration from the influential artists and intellectuals of the Bloomsbury Group, Days of Light is a sweeping, sensual historical novel of art, desire, and faith set against the backdrop of a changing England.
By: Megan Hunter
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A Season of Light
- By: Julie Iromuanya
- Narrated by: Yinka Ladeinde, Leo Anifowose
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
When 276 schoolgirls are abducted from their school in Nigeria, Fidelis Ewerike, a Florida-based barrister, poet, and former POW of the Nigerian Civil War, begins to go mad, consumed by memories of his younger sister Ugochi, who went missing during that conflict. Consumed by survivor’s guilt and fearful that the same fate awaits Amara, his sixteen-year-old daughter who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ugochi, Fidelis locks her in her bedroom, offering no words of explanation, only lovingly—if poorly—made meals and sweets.
By: Julie Iromuanya
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Isola
- A Novel
- By: Allegra Goodman
- Narrated by: Fiona Hardingham, Allegra Goodman
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes a unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island.
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Keep going
- By Mary on 04-26-25
By: Allegra Goodman
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Mercury
- A Novel
- By: Amy Jo Burns
- Narrated by: Maria Liatis
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
It’s 1990 and seventeen-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone’s table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town is three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun.
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Perhaps for a teenager?
- By Bonnie b. on 01-11-24
By: Amy Jo Burns
5 stars for setting and voice
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Wow!
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Believable story
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Heartwrenching Literary Feat
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Terrific story telling
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Fantastic writing
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Back and forth, happy and sad
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Magical
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The mixture of fantasy and reality
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Loved it!
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