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Summary
Summary
From the International bestselling author of The Underside of Joycomes an atmospheric novel about a man who returns to his Alaskan hometown after twenty years
Alaska doesn't forgive mistakes. That's what Kachemak Winkel's mother used to tell him. A lot of mistakes were made that awful day twenty years ago, when she died in a plane crash with Kache's father and brother--and Kache still feels responsible. He fled Alaska for good, but now his aunt Snag insists on his return. She admits she couldn't bring herself to check on his family's house in the woods--not even once since he's been gone.
Kache is sure the cabin has decayed into a pile of logs, but he finds smoke rising from the chimney and a mysterious Russian woman hiding from her own troubled past. Nadia has kept the house exactly the same--a haunting museum of life before the crash. And she's stayed there, afraid and utterly isolated, for ten years.
Set in the majestic, dangerous beauty of Alaska, All the Winters Afteris the story of two bound souls trying to free themselves, searching for family and forgiveness.
Author Notes
Sere Prince Halverson is the international bestselling author of The Underside of Joy, which was published in eighteen languages. She and her husband have four grown children and live in Northern California in a house in the woods.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Halverson's absorbing second novel (after The Underside of Joy), a pair of damaged introverts find love and healing in a remote corner of Alaska. After a layoff and a breakup, Kachemak Winkel has left Austin, Tex., for his family's homestead near Caboose, Ala., which he has not been to since a plane crash killed his parents and brother 20 years ago. Kache dreads revisiting the cabin where he grew up, expecting to find a pile of rubble. To his surprise, he finds it in perfect condition and unexpectedly occupied by Nadia, who fled an abusive marriage and a nearby religious enclave. She's been hiding in the cabin for the past 10 years with no companions but a dog and Kache's mother's journals. As Nadia and Kache strike up a tentative friendship, Kache rediscovers his long-dormant musical talent, delights in coaxing Nadia out into the bigger world, and begins to let go of the tragedy in his past. But there are obstacles, particularly Nadia's ex-husband, who has a score to settle. Although Nadia seems too well-adjusted for an ex-fundamentalist who's lived in complete isolation for a decade, and Kache could use a few more flaws, their love story is engaging, and the spectacular setting and delightful supporting cast infuse the plot with vitality. A surprise ending is a perfect capper to this unorthodox romance. Agent: Elizabeth Weed, Weed Literary. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Kachemak Winkel's life seemed to end the day his family died in a plane crash. He left the Alaskan wilderness they called home, and two decades of survivor guilt kept him from returning. Following a breakup and the loss of his Texas job, though, he finally decides to make that return trip. Realizing that even his aunt neglected to look in on the family home for all those years, Kache is filled with regret and concern, certain that the place will be nothing more than a rotting hulk. Instead he finds it occupied and maintained by Nadia, a young Russian woman who has been hiding there for 10 years. Nadia is reluctant to share much with Kache, but as time passes, the two begin to build a rapport, then a friendship, and, as the healing continues, perhaps something more. With sweet, heartfelt characters and a richly described setting, Halverson blends mystery and suspense into a love story of many layers, not the least of which is a declaration of love to the Alaskan wilderness and its people.--Ophoff, Cortney Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
First published in Britain as The House of Frozen Dreams, Halverson's second book after the well-received The Underside of Joy is an absolute delight from start to finish. After 20 years away from Alaska, Kachemak Winkel has finally worked up the courage to return to the town of Caboose to check on the family homestead and confront the ghosts of his past. The lingering loss of his immediate family in a plane crash years earlier has left him haunted by memories of their wilderness home and the conflicts between himself and his father. Expecting to find the cabin fallen into ruins after two decades of neglect, Kache is astonished to discover a young woman hiding there from her own troubled life growing up in an Old Believer (an offshoot of the Russian Orthodox church) village not far from Caboose. Little does he know that stepping back into his past will lead to the greatest revelation of his life-that his father loved and believed in him and that a woman, haunted by her own past, would become his salvation. -Halverson based the town of Caboose on the real-life community of Homer on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula. VERDICT Written with a deep appreciation for both the beauty and danger of the last frontier, this novel will resonate with readers looking for more than just another adventure story.-Jane Henriksen Baird, -Anchorage P.L., AK © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
CHAPTER ONE Evening crept its way into the cabin, and she went to get the knife. Always this, the need to proclaim: I was here today, alive on this Earth. Here. Still. She took the knife from the shelf to carve a single line in the log-planked stairwell that led from the kitchen to the root cellar. She'd carved them in groups of four one-inch vertical lines bisected with a horizontal line. So many of them now, covering most of the wall. They might be seen as clusters of crosses, but to her, they were not reminders of death and sacrifice but evidence of her own existence. There were left-behind carvings too, in dated columns filling the doorjamb on the landing at the top of the stairs. These notches marked the heights of growing children, two living in the forties and fifties, and two in the seventies and eighties, one of whom had grown quite tall. She saw the mother standing on a footstool, trying to reach the top of her son's head to mark the wood with pencil, while he stood on tiptoes, trying to appear even taller. She almost heard their teasing, their laughing. Almost. Six stairs down, she dug the tip of the knife into the wall. The nightly ritual was important. While she no longer lived according to endless rules and regulations, with all those objects and gestures and chants, she did not want her days flowing like water with no end or beginning-shapeless, unmarked. So she read every night, book after book, first in the order that they lined the shelves, turning them upside down when she finished reading and then right side up for the second read and so forth, returning to her favorites again and again. And during the day, she did chores-foraging, launching and checking fishing nets, setting and checking traps, gardening, tending house, feeding chickens and goats, canning and brining and smoking-all in a certain order, varying only according to the needs of the season. Her days always began with a cold-nose nudge from the dog, and not one but two enthusiastic licks of her hand, as if to say not just good morning, but Good Morning! Good Morning! Then there were the mornings she ignored the dog and unlatched the kitchen door so he could push it open with his nose to let himself out while she returned to bed to stay, dark mornings that led to dark days and weeks. During those times, only under piles of blankets did she feel substantial enough not to drift away; they kept her weighted down and a part of the world. But her dog's persistence and her own strong will eventually would win over, and she'd drag herself up from the thick bog and go back to her chores and her books, carving the missing days into the wall so they did not escape entirely. It was surprising, what a human being could become accustomed to-a lone human being, miles and years from any other human being. She balanced two more logs and a chunk of coal in the woodstove and, with the dog following her, crossed the room in the left-behind slippers, which had, over time, taken on the shape of her own feet. She'd been careful to keep things as she'd found them, but those slippers were another way she'd made her mark, left her footprint, insignificant as it might be. She sat in the worn checkered chair and picked up one of the yellowed magazines from 1985. Across the cover: Cosmetic Surgery, the Quest for New Faces and Bodies-At a Price. "A new face, this would help," she once again reminded Leo, who thumped his tail. Unlike the people in the article, she said this not because she was wrinkled (she wasn't) or thought herself homely (she didn't). "It would give us much freedom, yes? A different life." She opened the big photography book of The City by the Bay and took in her favorite image of the red bridge they called golden and the city beyond, as white as the mountains across this bay. So similar and yet so different. That white city held people, people, people. Here, the white mountains held snow. "And their bridge," she told Leo, closing the book. "We could use that bridge." He cocked his head just as she heard something scrape outside. A branch. In her mind, she kept labeled buckets in which she let sounds drop: Branch, Moose, Wolf, Bear, Chicken, Wind, Falling Ice, and on and on. Leo's ears perked, but he didn't get up. He too was used to the varied scuttlings of the wilderness. She drew the afghan around her shoulders and opened a novel to the page marked with a pressed forget-me-not. Yes, she knew a certain comfort here-camaraderie, even. How could she be truly alone, when outside her door, nature kept noisy company and at her feet lay a dog such as Leo? Then there were the books. She'd traveled inside the minds of so many men and women from across the ages. And she had such long, uninterrupted passages of time to think, to ponder every turn her mind took. For instance, there was the word loneliness and the word loveliness. In English, one mere letter apart, and in her handwriting, the words looked almost identical, certainly related. This she found consoling, and sometimes even true. But now, another sound, and then many unmistakable sounds-determined footsteps coming toward the house. Leo's ears flipped back before he plunged into sharp barking and frantic clawing. She froze. All those years practicing what she would do, but she only sat, with the book open in her trembling hands. Where did she leave the gun? In the barn? How had she grown so careless? The knife on the shelf in the stairwell. She bolted up to grab it. Flipped off the lights, took hold of Leo's rope collar, tugging him from the door and up the stairs to the second floor. She peered out the window. Though the moon was full, she couldn't see anyone. She pulled the shade, but it snapped up, so she yanked it back down. With all her strength, she dragged Leo, pushing and barely wedging him under the bunk bed with her, and clamped his nose with her hand just as the loose kitchen window creaked open below. A male voice, a yelling, though she didn't hear the words over Leo's whining and the blood pum-pumming in her ears. It was him, she was sure of it. Shaking, shaking, she squeezed harder on the handle of the knife and wished for the gun. But she was good with a knife; she was sure of that too. Excerpted from All the Winters After by Seré Prince Halverson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
