Northernmost - (Eide Family) by Peter Geye (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"A beautiful, big-hearted, triumphant novel."--Nathan Hill, author of The Nix

In 1897, Odd Einar Eide returns home from a near-death experience in the Arctic only to discover his own funeral underway. His wife, Inger, stunned to see him alive, is slow to warm back up to him, having spent many sleepless nights convinced she had lost both him and their daughter, Thea, who traveled to America two years earlier but has yet to send even a single letter back to them in Hammerfest, their small Norwegian town at the top of the earth.

More than a century later, Greta Nansen has finally begun to admit to herself that her marriage is over. Desperately unhappy and unfulfilled, she makes the decision to follow her husband from their home in Minnesota to Oslo, where he has traveled for work, to end it once and for all. But on impulse, she diverts her travels to Hammerfest: the town of her ancestors, the town where her great-great-grandmother Thea was born--and for some reason never returned to. Braiding together two remarkable stories of love and survival, Northernmost wades into the darkest recesses of the human heart and celebrates the remarkable ability of humans to endure nearly unimaginable trials.

Review Quotes

"Geye imbues isolating bleakness with a perverse beauty . . . Geye captures winter so well in its physical and emotional consequences. That this can leave a reader with a bit of a chill in both body and soul is a considered risk." --Minneapolis Star Tribune

"An Odyssean tale. . . . Masterful." --Houston Chronicle

"We might as well give Peter Geye the Nobel Prize for winter, or declare him the poet laureate of snow. For no other writer so skillfully captures landscapes of glacier and tundra--both their bleakness and their particular beauty. To read him is to feel the ache of a blizzard on your skin. But in Northernmost, he has also given us an exhilarating tale of adventure and love and heartache and faith, a story of overcoming the most trying ordeals imaginable. Partly a tale of heroic survival, partly a meticulously researched history, and partly an epic romance, Northernmost is, most of all, a beautiful, big-hearted, triumphant novel." --Nathan Hill, author of The Nix

"Northernmost fascinated me with its frozen landscapes and Arctic winters, and it warmed me with the tenderness of its storytelling and humanity of its characters. Peter Geye has written a tremendously satisfying family saga about the tenacity of love amid the unpredictable, ungovernable forces that act on our lives." --Maggie Shipstead, author of Great Circle

"A study of marriage and family across time and geographies. . . . Northernmost is rich in history, adventure, and love." --Kao Kalia Yang, author of The Song Poet

"Peter Geye may well be the William Faulkner of the North Country." --William Kent Krueger, author of This Tender Land

"A marvel of storytelling." --Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

"Evocative. . . . [A] literary yet action-packed novel that weaves together two stories, separated by a century." --Historical Novel Society

"Impressive. . . . A memorable, powerful tale of endurance and ancestral connection." --Publishers Weekly

"Breathtaking. . . . A beautiful ode to the enduring human spirit." --BookPage (starred review)

"Elegant . . . Geye artfully spans 120 years of the Eide family's story." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About the Author