"Legends of the North Cascades" is a raw and unflinching look at the damage being a soldier in war can do to a man, his family, and his wider community.

It is not an easy book to read. You will not like all of the decisions that Dave makes for himself and for his daughter. You will want to scream at him, shake him by the shoulders and try to bring him to his senses. More than that, you will want to rise up against the society that takes for granted what he endured in Iraq and how it ignores his obvious PTSD because it is easier to do that.

And in the end, you will see that the idea of happily-ever-after does not and cannot mean the same thing to everyone.

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I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest and original review. All thoughts are my own.

Jonathan Evison's "Legends of the North Cascades" is a captivating blend of historical fiction and contemporary drama. It weaves together the stories of Dave, a war veteran struggling with PTSD, and Bella, his precocious daughter, with the experiences of an ancient family facing the harsh realities of the Ice Age.

The narrative follows Dave's desperate attempt to escape his troubled life by retreating to the isolated wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. Evison masterfully depicts the beauty and unforgiving nature of the Cascades, creating a vivid backdrop for their fight for survival.

While the plot explores themes of isolation and the pressure to conform, it's ultimately a story about the enduring love between a father and daughter. Evison's portrayal of their bond is both heartbreaking and heartwarming.

3.5 out of 5 stars

I loved the chapters where we saw the visions of this land from the perspective of the mother and son in the Ice Age, I thought it was really cool how Jonathan Evison tied the two groups to the land. I can understand how Dave felt that escaping to the woods would solve his problems. I lived in the Yukon and there are a lot of people with PTSD who move up there to be far away from people. I felt at times that the story was a little slow and I found my mind wandering.

Overall, the story was good. I liked the ending and felt it brought the characters full circle and now maybe they can deal with their grief.

"Sometimes the things of this world know when they are beaten. Sometimes they don't fight to the bitter end because they know better."

David a former high school football star, and marine deals with PTSD and is also grieving the loss of his wife. As he tries to cope with that and still raise his 7 year old daughter who is also grieving her mother, he finds it hard to trust and live the city life. He decides to take his daughter and live in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. As most would, his family thinks it's a bad idea to take himself as well as his daughter to live in a cave, alone and secluded, not surrounded by anyone else. While Bella wants to be with her father and has adjusted to living in nature, she also longs to be with friends.

This story follows the journey of David and Bella as they fend for themselves living in a cave in the mountains. Their family continuously try to persuade David to come back to live amongst family. If not for both of them, for Bella at least. I found myself captivated by their story and how they lived and the way in which David taught his daughter to live in the wilderness. On one hand I felt that it was a great learning experience for her, but I also felt that it had to be hard for Bella, a growing young girl being without friends. But, not only without friends, but without a mother.

I was kind of surprised at how much I did enjoy reading/listening to this one, and I was so interested to see the outcome of the story.

A story that explores many aspects of life including living in the wilderness, being different and a father-daughter relationship, this book is a sweet literary fiction to dive into if you are feeling like contemplating life and choices. With two parallel timelines, one set around the time of the end of the last ice age, and the other in present time, the name aptly describes two legends from the North Cascades area.

Legends of the North Cascades is divided into four parts: The Book of Dead, The Book of Doubt, The Book of the Living and The Book of Healing. This first part portrays the challenges of confronting grief, how different people react to it and face it. Dave makes a tough choice of relocating to the mThe four parts portray the cycles of growth that Dave and Bella go through, all the time strengthening their relationship. I loved reading about Dave as a father and his feelings towards Bella. He treats her like an adult most of the time, and he is humble in a way that I hadn’t expected. In the wilderness, when he loses his way and she is confident of the path, she lets her take the lead. At the same time, even when she may have the intuition that he is going to lead them astray, she follows his lead until she can’t. They have a way of working together and supporting each other which is heartwarming to read about.

The book has a very interesting structure. At times, it felt like a report on the legend of Cave Dave, the man who took his daughter to the mountains and decided to live there. Many of the people from town are interviewed and asked about what they think of him. Most of them are fair and remember his pre-marine days, while always praising him for his love for his daughter. While society does have concrete views around how a child should be raised - in a house, in town - Dave prefers to let Bella learn from books and Nature. She enjoyed this sort of learning, though there are many times when she reflects on how different her life in the mountains is from the town. She prefers to be with her father though.

Many thanks to the publisher for providing me a digital review copy through Netgalley. Read full read on Armed with A Book.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC digital copy. I have not been compensated for my opinion and this is an honest review.

Unfortunately, I was unable to finish reading this ARC digital copy before needing to switch to other books that were being archived. The book is no longer on my Goodreads "want to read" list, but I will update my review to reflect an updated opinion if I decide to finish at a later date.

This story is told in two parts. The present day where Dave suffers from PTSD and his life in the past from when he was in the military. We also follow Bella, his daughter. This book takes you on a journey with Dave and his daughter where they live off the grid, in a cave. This was an interesting read however I never quite felt connected to the characters or fully invested. I

After a tragic accident, Dave Cartwright takes his seven year old daughter, Mirabella, Bella for short, to live in a cave in the wilderness in the North Cascades. Legends of the North Cascades tells us the story of tragedy, family, and the hardship of a single father. Dave does his best to give Bella, the best life she could ask for, but sometimes, things are more difficult than it seems.

I gave Legends of the North Cascades three stars. I had wanted to enjoy this, especially seeing that there would be jumps into the ... Ice Age Era? But, was thoroughly disappointed when the writing had let me down. I just found that the way the Legends of the North Cascades progressed when Dave took Bella to live in the caves of the North Cascades, I had wanted more excitement as Dave became a better father to Bella and them adapting to the wilderness of the North Cascades. But the way it was written, it just seemed as if I was reading a wilderness cave living log, "Day one: Bella witnessed the birth of tiny kittens." That was an example of what I felt as I was reading. The words didn't flow effortlessly, instead, it was as if I were chopping carrots.

And the time jumps to the Ice Age era, with S'tka and her life, it was rather confusing. What was the purpose of jumping back in time except getting the history of the North Cascades? There just was no relevance to the story between the past and the present with Dave and Bella except that it took place in the North Cascades.

I was excited to read Legends of the North Cascades, but I just felt that the writing could have been much better and the plot could have been more developed as well as more refined. There was just too much going on with not enough description. Many of these were also just rather irrelevant to the Legends of the North Cascades.

Dave Cartwright is a veteran, husband and father. He has returned from Iraq after his third tour there and is suffering from PTSD. One thing that keeps him steady is his relationship with his daughter.

When the book opens Dave and his wife are having martial issues. When she leaves the house after a fight, a terrible accident occurs and Dave is left to care for his daughter, Bella. After trying to get back to normal, he makes a decision that he and Bella can’t live this life any longer. He decides to move them to the mountains and live in a cave.

Bella is sweet, smart and kind, and all she wants is to be with her father. Her extended family wants her back with them and out of the cave. They collect her, but eventually she winds back with her dad.

You can imagine, authorities are monitoring them, social workers are involved, but only a harrowing accident might get them down from the mountains.

This is not a book I would normally read, but the longer I sit with it, the more I am thinking this will be a story that stays with me for a long time. Your heart strings will pull for this father-daughter duo and their continued bond.

Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Any type of review is subjective, whether it is of a movie, a restaurant, or a book. Sometimes my book ratings differ significantly from those of other professional readers… I’m a tough critic because I write and edit for a living. In this case, I rated the book higher than the average rating of 3.77 stars.

After three tours in Iraq, Dave Cartwright went home to small town Washington State to the people and the place that once defined him. Most days, his love for his seven-year-old daughter, Bella, was the only thing keeping him going. When tragedy struck, Dave made a dramatic decision: he took her to live in a cave in the wilderness of the North Cascades. They made an arduous journey up the mountain and experience one disaster after another. Bella retreats into a different world, that of a mother and son who lived there at the end of last Ice Age.

This novel was beautifully complex, gorgeously written, and visually appealing. At first, I didn’t care for the parallel narrative of Bella and her father/the native woman and her son, but as the novel progressed, the way Evison constructed the novel was ideal. Legends of the North Cascades was a reminder that a life of isolation is not how God designed us. We were meant for community among people who love and care for us. It was also an indictment on contemporary society. It was heartbreaking to read about a veteran who felt he needed to escape into the mountains to get away from the world. Was it a happy read? No. But it was very well done. 4 stars.

This book was truly unlike anything I've read before and a great read for anybody who is even remotely familiar with the Pacific Northwest. I live in Oregon and the San Juan islands in Washington are my favorite place in the whole world - so having the book set so close nearby was special and added to the intrigue.

You will really feel for the characters in this book - every single one of them was so realistic and well-drawn. My favorite was Bella, the eight-year-old girl who experiences the flashbacks into the Ice Age. How cool (ha ha ha) is that?

The Ice Age flashbacks were the slowest part of the book, even though I appreciated the parallels with Dave and Bella's journey. I also didn't care for the flashbacks to Dave's football career in high school.

However, these are minor quibbles and I flew through this book in one day. I'm truly impressed with this author and feel lucky to be part of the ARC squad for this book. A hearty four stars from me!

*I received an ARC from Algonquin Publishers in exchange for an honest review.*

Oh man, I usually find wilderness books so stressful, so add PTSD on top of that and you know I am alternating between hiding under the covers and/or biting my nails.

This is not an easy read, but I loved the writing by Evison and I look forward to his future work!

I’ve been binge watching the television show Alone and this book seemed to fit right in with the theme, wilderness survival. Perhaps I have seen too much of that show as I was a bit critical of the survival methods in this book, but that wasn’t the point. This is about a man, Dave Cartwright, with PTSD from serving too many tours in Iraq. He’s finally done with his service, comes home and his marriage is falling apart. Yet at one point they have a long, long talk and things are better and now they are having a baby.

In the present time for the main story the baby, Bella is seven, nearly eight years old, and they just lost the glue of the family. Dave doesn’t handle this one more loss well and gives up on society, thinks that everyone has everything wrong and what we need is to return to nature, to feel what is real. So he takes his daughter into the mountains, the North Cascades to live. Dave found a cave that is secure, they go to town for supplies and library books.

Meanwhile Bella “hears” or “understands” this life from a long time ago, a woman S’tka and her life, starting as S’tka and her husband were kicked out of the clan. Then she is pregnant. S’tka and her family end up at moments mirroring what is going on with Dave and Bella.

In town, Dave’s brother and family, have a hard time with letting him just go live in the woods with a young girl. A social worker hikes out to visit them, a ranger. Dave’s brother takes custody for a while. There are brief snippets from people in town about what they thought about “Cave Dave”.

The chapters are short, and we have Bella's point of view as well. Having the little bits from the town people ultimately did not add anything to the story. At first, I wasn’t sure where the ancient people’s stories were going, why was it added into the novel, but with the mirroring aspect it does add another layer to the overall story. It has its own tale to tell, about being alone in the world separated from your community and what it takes to survive.

This exploration of the fallout from trauma, both family tragedy and combat PTSD, follows a father who decides to take his young daughter with him into the wilderness to live a self-sufficient life apart from society. The story plays out as a slow descent into dysfunction as the unforgiving mountain winter settles in. Evison would have produced a tightly plotted drama, but he also inserts another timeline describing a small family in the neolithic age, exiled into the very same wilderness traveled by our contemporary protagonists. This Ice Age storyline feels awkward and contrived, and seems to serve no real purpose in the novel except to be distracting. It would be interesting to read the novel again and skip every other chapter. Otherwise, this is an intriguing read about people doing their best to find a way to continue living.

Legends of the North Cascades is a fascinating read but difficult to put in a category. It is a novel of PTSD and the relationship between a father and his daughter. Dave Cartwright is an veteran of the War in Iraq, suffering from a severe case of PTSD. He used to be good at many things, but now he finds himself losing his grip on reality. Bella, his 7 year old daughter, is the only thing grounding him in reality. When tragedy strikes, Dave and Bella flee to the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, living in caves once inhabited by primitive people. As they spend more time in the Cascades, the past begins to intrude. Bella becomes absorbed in visions of the mother and son who inhabited the cave at the end of the Ice Age, thousands of years ago. Authorities are trying to force them to move back in town but they are becoming legendary with the townsfolk and find they have more help then they thought. Legends of the North Cascades is a unique tale of family and its strength. Many thanks to Net Galley for the ARC.

At the root of this book is the devastation caused when we deploy our young men and women to foreign soil to protect the interests of Big Oil. The mental and physical taxation on our youngest and brightest is without measure, affecting entire families, and it has to stop. We did this during the Viet Nam war to protect the drugs, and you’d think we would have looked around us to see our broken Nam Vets and say never again.

We meet Dave as a promising scholar and athlete and get to know him after his third tour of duty which left him helpless against wracking anger and rages. I enjoyed the book and I liked the “testimonial” chapters, like little interviews. What I struggled with was the twin coming-of-age stories of N’ka and Bella and skimmed through the ice age parts. This is my third book by this talented author.

This book was heartbreaking yet captivating with the way it was written. The main character, Dave, is dealing with PTSD and raising his young daughter. Dave decides his best way to cope is to go off the grid and head for the mountains where he and his daughter live in a cave. The story is told from dual timelines and will haunt you with the descriptive writing.

The real hero of this tale is a young woman of remarkable strength. Her father Dave , a veteran, war survivor is looking for a life he thinks will cure his unease. His frustrations, his lack of life. He imagines living in the wild the answer to these problems. He takes his daughter and for close to a year they dodge forest personnel and rangers , to live among the wild. Parallel to this story is the coming of age of the ancient ones who staked claim to the land long ago. Two stories one theme, survival. Happy reading

Thanks to Algonquin and Netgalley for the early copy of this one in exchange for a review.

I liked the premise of this- a father taking his daughter to live off the grid in the mountains after his wife dies. However, the story wasn’t totally believable. I don’t get what makes the father want to do this, it doesn’t feel explained enough. Also it seems like the father would lose custody of the kid for pulling that.

What really dragged the story down for me was the alternate story of the people in the past. I didn’t care and I stopped reading those chapters pretty early on. Story would’ve been better without them.

3.5 stars

This was…complex. After sleeping on it, it boils down to this: this is a memorable, engaging, and haunting story. But ultimately not for me.

Writing: ★★★★
Story structure: ★★★
Plot/Pacing: ★★★
Characters: ★★★

Dave Cartwright is done. Unwilling to look his PTSD from Iraq in the eye, when his wife dies in a car accident after their last fight it's the last straw for Dave--he throws in the towel. With society.

He becomes convinced that the only way to take charge of his life--and the life of his seven-year-old daughter, Bella--is that he needs to move them into the North Cascades, a mountain range in rural Washington. So he does. He leaves his house, his life, his money, and his support network and takes Bella.

So the two Cartwrights move into the wilderness. So far, so good. Bella thinks its an adventure, and Dave can finally breathe away from all of the gunk that he didn't want to face in town.

But then things start to turn, and Bella's life changes--she starts seeing these visions. Not flashbacks, per se, but more glimpses into the life of an ancient Native American woman who lived in these mountains at the end of the last Ice Age.

With those two dual narratives--Bella and Dave's in the present, Sitka and her son's in the far ancient past--this novel unfolds with atmospheric undertones and an ominous edge.

Will the North Cascades let either duo survive?

If this feels very much like the concept of Into the Wild to you, you're not alone. I felt very similar vibes and reactions to this decision while Dave was putting it into place. (Into the Wild frustrated me to no end.) Does Dave think this will work? How does he think this is good for his daughter, who is still learning things in school and is grieving herself? How long does he think he can keep this up? Why are we spending so much time with this Native American family? Why is Bella seeing their lives play out like a disassociated movie in her head?

Those were my questions.

Maybe it was just me, as a 26-year-old female with no overly outdoor bone in her body. Maybe it was also my complete lack of experience with PTSD as it relates to our current veterans returning from a war with more grey areas than justice. But. At the end of the day, I just didn't understand Dave or his motivations. And when I couldn't get behind his decisions, I found myself upset with the story. I was worried for Bella, for their survival, for their sanity. I was also extremely perturbed by the lack of action taken by the town and Dave's surrounding family.

I don't know, folks. I found myself more concerned with the logistics and logic of this book to the point that I couldn't enjoy the story. My family calls me the extreme "over -worrier" though, so take my ??? with a grain of salt.

Another element of the story that confused me was the interjections of Sitka, the Native American woman, surviving with her young family in the same wilderness. I completely understood the parallels taking place--one family versus another in the same place, with the same desperate wills to survive. But to have Sitka's story displayed to Bella, and not to Dave, felt strange to me. How is a young child supposed to make sense of that story, and what was she supposed to do with this information?

I don't know. As you can see, I have a lot of feelings and strong emotions around this story. Because of that, I DO strongly encourage others to pick up Legends of the North Cascades if the story seems of interest to you. The writing is stellar and the plot is compelling, and it clearly provokes a response--which is the best type of fiction.

Thank you to Algonquin for my copy in exchange for an honest review.