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As a kid, I dismissed fairytales because I couldn’t relate to them. No prince was ever going to slide my Flintstone feet into glass slippers. Nope, never going to happen. Then I discovered Fractured Fairy Tales and understood. Black Woods is a fractured fairy tale without the parody. If you had told me I would love a relatively thick-sized parable sans the satire, I’d laugh. But being an early reader offered me space to savor this loose inspiration of Beauty and the Beast, of Goldilocks and Red Riding Hood, and perhaps other fables that, at the moment, escape me. It’s a tale of isolation, origin, coming of age, parents and children.

The reader doesn’t get to know everything that the characters undergo. Arthur, the lonely one and second to the main character, knows more than the reader about the fractures of his family and of course his own origin. It’s a secret that threatens to destroy a family. Well, it almost destroyed me, also.

Birdie and her four-year-old daughter, Emaleen, have made it on their own all these years in Alaska. Then Arthur shows up to rescue Emaleen when she gets lost in the woods and brings her back to Birdie. The relationship between Birdie and Arthur grows, and the three become a unit, a small happy family living out in the wild, berry picking and catching fish. They depend on getting supplies from Arthur’s dad, Warren, who regularly flies his plane to Arthur’s cabin with replenishments.

BWBS takes a few unexpected turns that made me come undone; the narrative kinetics gradually shift the mood from fairy tale magic to unhinged suspense. I thought the story was moving in one direction, and then abrupt events pulled me out of my complacency. This is all I want to say about that.

The Alaskan wilderness explodes onto every page, and I was often lost in the charm, the flora and fauna of its rural beauty. Ivey takes her sweet time advancing the plot and revealing the crux of her story. As I started the last section (the last 60 pages), I was in a dark and dire place, my pulse racing and my throat closing while my legs crumbled to dust and I was blown away.

I’m not sure if I even realistically suggested what this book is about. I don’t want to do spoilers, so I’ll say that this will appeal to readers who enjoy fables with a twist and a nature-saturated setting. If you like allegory and wilderness beauty, you will enjoy this. Expect the unexpected.

If you haven’t read The Snow Child, an earlier book, you’re in for a treat! Eowyn Ivey has a magnificent imagination. And it is here on every page. My only and minor critique was that the denouement and ending were a bit dilatory, it could have been a bit more succinct without losing its power. And powerful it is, a novel that is still haunting me, days later.

“From this height, the impressive Wolverine River looked like a small creek, and on the other side she saw the barest glints of metal that had to be the roofs of the lodge and cabins…[s]he had the sensation of slipping out of herself, of inhabiting both places at once—sitting on the picnic table and imagining what it would be like to stand on this mountain ridge, and also standing here and looking down at her old life, and it was as if she soared, breathless and thrilled, in the blue sky between the two.�

Thank you to Penguin Random House books for sending me a galley for review.