From the Publisher
Armstrong describes camp life and deep-woods adventures with a gritty cadence evoking a world before the Acadian forest became endangered.” — Washington Post
"Enchanting . . . . The adventure brims with folklore and superstition, as Pearly musters the courage to overcome her fears, and there are many lighthearted moments, such as when Pearly convinces Bruno to climb into the backseat of a car. This gentle story is sure to win Armstrong new fans.” — Publishers Weekly
"Armstrong’s prose is shot through with Pearly’s unique vernacular, and readers will feel the bone-cold winter and taste the blood of many blows that befall almost everyone. Meeting Pearly will change readers’ minds about who is civilized and who is not.” — Booklist
“Well-wrought touches of the fantastic enhance this tale….Armstrong, who has published five books of poetry and two previous novels, tells their tale in lyrically striking prose and makes its fairy tale elements work by grounding them in the grim realities and stunning beauties of life in a Depression-era logging camp. A campfire story about a girl whose brother is a bear becomes a warmly enchanting novel.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“An unforgettable tale of unconditional love and the powerful bond of siblings. A remarkable story, sparkling with brilliance.” — Amanda Peters, author of The Berry Pickers
"Beautifully drawn and yet as succinct and addictive as any adventure story." — Zoe Whittall, author of The Best Kind of People and The Fake
“What a find! Pearly Everlasting is one of those novels that instantly transports you to a world that’s so big hearted and full of love that you can’t put it down. It's a story that will stay with me for a long long time.” — Willy Vlautin, author of The Horse and The Night Always Comes
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2024-09-28
Well-wrought touches of the fantastic enhance this tale of a girl growing up in a Canadian logging camp a century ago.
About the time that Pearly Everlasting Hazen—named for a wildflower—is born in a remote logging camp in New Brunswick in 1920, her father, the camp cook, finds a tiny, orphaned bear cub in an ice-rimmed burrow. He brings the creature home, and his wife nurses her infant daughter and the cub together. As far as Pearly Everlasting and her family are concerned, Bruno is her brother, even as he grows big enough to unsettle strangers. The logging camps where the Hazens live are harsh places; if the work doesn’t kill someone, the weather might. Pearly Everlasting’s mother, Eula, is a healer who tends workers’ broken bones and other wounds, while her husband, Edon, keeps everyone fed. Pearly Everlasting and Bruno—and human older sister Ivy—grow up in this nurturing nest, attuned to the natural world and pretty much blissfully unaware of what’s beyond. Their only outside contact is a woman they call Song-catcher, an ethnologist who, with her companion, Ebony, travels around with cumbersome recording equipment to document folk music and tales by people like Eula. The eventual snake in this childhood paradise is a new camp boss, a bully named Swicker, who arrives with a couple of minions and soon has Bruno in his sights. An attempt to bear-nap Bruno and sell him to an animal trader is foiled with the help of Song-catcher and Ebony, but later girl and bear, teenagers by now, stumble upon a murdered body, and Bruno is blamed and confiscated. Pearly Everlasting’s harrowing quest to get him back, on foot through the winter woods and then in a town that’s a complete mystery to her, is paralleled by the search for the pair by a young man named Ansell, a worker at the camp whose face is strangely webbed with silver scars, the result of a lightning strike. Armstrong, who has published five books of poetry and two previous novels, tells their tale in lyrically striking prose and makes its fairy tale elements work by grounding them in the grim realities and stunning beauties of life in a Depression-era logging camp.
A campfire story about a girl whose brother is a bear becomes a warmly enchanting novel.
