Ivey incorporates photographs and drawings throughout the novel, and uses letters, journal entries, museum cards and excerpts from history books to tell her fictionalized version of the true story of Sophie and Allen Forrester. So begins Sophie and Allen’s parallel journeys into the unknown: Both imagine successful outcomes, but their actual experiences are much more demanding and tragic than either of them would have imagined. Sophie bucks tradition and plans on accompanying her new husband on his trip, but when she learns she is pregnant she must stay behind in a more conventional - read, dull - life. Allen Forrester takes his young bride, Sophie, to the Pacific Northwest, where they are stationed in Oregon as a starting point for Allen’s upcoming exploration of the Alaska Territory. In “To the Bright Edge of the World,” Eowyn Ivey’s highly anticipated follow-up to her debut novel, “The Snow Child,” the late 19th-century Alaskan frontier is the setting for a physical, and spiritual, exploration of the unknown. These days it’s hard to imagine a time when the way to see unexplored land was to venture deep into the heart of the wilderness with no travel guide, no satellite phone and no tips from fellow travelers met online.
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