Wintering

by Peter Geye

Overview

A highly acclaimed novelist now gives us a true epic: a love story that spans sixty years, generations’ worth of feuds, and secrets withheld and revealed.

The two principal stories at play in Wintering are bound together when the elderly, demented Harry Eide escapes his sickbed and vanishes into the forbidding, northernmost wilderness that surrounds the town of Gunflint, Minnesota—instantly changing the Eide family, and many other lives, forever. He’d done this once before, more than thirty years earlier in 1963, fleeing a crumbling marriage and bringing along Gustav, his eighteen-year-old son, pitching this audacious, potentially fatal scheme—winter already coming on, in these woods, on these waters—as a reenactment of the ancient voyageurs’ journeys of discovery.

It’s certainly something Gus has never forgotten, nor the Devil’s Maw of a river, a variety of beloved (possibly fantastical) maps, the ice floes and waterfalls (neither especially appealing from a canoe), a magnificent bear, the endless portages, a magical abandoned shack, Thanksgiving and Christmas improvised at the far end of the earth, the brutal cold and sheer beauty of it all. And men hunting other men.

Now—with his father pronounced dead—Gus relates their adventure in vivid detail to Berit Lovig, who’d spent much of her life waiting for Harry, her passionate conviction finally fulfilled over the last two decades. So, a middle-aged man rectifying his personal history, an aging lady wrestling with her own, and with the entire saga of a town and region they’d helped to form and were in turn formed by, relentlessly and unforgettably.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101946473
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/07/2016
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

PETER GEYE was born and raised in Minneapolis, where he continues to live. His previous novels are Safe from the Sea and The Lighthouse Road.

Read an Excerpt

Our winters are faithful and unfailing and we take what they bring, but this season has tested even the most devout among us. The thermometer hanging outside my window reads thirty-­two degrees below zero. Five degrees warmer than yesterday, which itself was warmer than the day before. I can hear the pines exploding, heartwood turned to splinter and pulp all up and down the Burnt Wood River.

As if the cold weren’t enough, yesterday brought another unkindness. Gustav Eide came bearing it: his father’s red woolen hat—­the one he wore almost every day, the type children wear tobogganing—­found by those Bargaard twins as they ice-­skated out past the breakwater.

It wasn’t the first time Gus came knocking this winter. Back in November he held his own hat in his hands. Gus, with his father’s lonesome, lazy eyes, standing bareheaded but buttoned up outside my door.

“I hate to drop in unannounced, Berit,” he had said then.

“Since when do we stand on ceremony around here? Come in.”

He stepped inside but stood with his back against the door, his eyes studying his bootlaces. I’ve seen much of this town’s woe, its suffering and tragedy, and have marked it all. While I stood there waiting for Gus to speak, I knew my own everlasting sadness was suddenly upon me.

“He disappeared last night, Berit.” He spoke without looking up. “He’s gone.”

I turned and stepped carefully to the bench under the window and sat.

“We found tracks heading up the river,” he said.

I looked up at him, now looking down at me. I thought of sitting at his father’s bedside the evening before, holding his hand, singing to him. I thought of how Harry had looked at me, his gaze seeming to go through me and into some past only he could see. I was disappearing from his view. This I knew.

Gus came and sat next to me on the bench. “That new sheriff—­Ruutu’s his name—­is leading the search. We went all the way up past the lower falls. The dogs lost his scent around the Devil’s Maw. Ruutu’s down in Gunflint right now, calling for more help.”

He reached over and held my hand, a gesture he surely learned from his father and one that calmed me down, at once familiar and uncanny. There are depths to those Eides no sounding line will ever reach. I knew this about Harry and I have come to know it about Gus, though on that November morning he knew me much better than I did him.

“They’re not going to find him, Berit.”

He let my hand go and sat back and rubbed the cold from his cheeks.

“Why would you say that? He can’t have gone far,” I said, thinking again of that faraway look in Harry’s eyes.

“We’ve heard this story before, haven’t we?”

“Speak plainly, would you? For the benefit of an old lady?”

Then Gus looked through me just as his father had only hours before. “People searched for don’t get found here. Not in these woods.” He closed his eyes and shook his head as though to banish some thought. “Put on some coffee? I’ll tell you how all this happened.”

So I did. I went to the kitchen and filled the kettle at the sink. As the water poured from the faucet I glanced upriver, where I have kept my eyes more or less since. Two stories began that day in November. One of them was new and the other as old as this land itself. Both of them were borne by the river.

Ruutu and his deputies and Gus and his sister, Signe, and the good people of Gunflint spent a week searching for Harry, every dawn following some new dead end into the wilderness, every dusk emerging from wherever they’d been, tired and cold and no closer to finding him. Gus stopped by each evening to tell me where they’d looked, assuring me every single time they’d never find him. Even still, the next morning he went out with the others. Sometimes three or four parties, following three or four leads. When, finally, they conceded Harry to the wilderness, it was thanks to Gus’s insistence. Signe went back home to Minneapolis. Gus back to his job teaching English and history at Arrowhead High School. Ruutu back to our local misdemeanors and traffic violations.

Me? I was still searching in my own fashion. That first morning, I visited Harry’s empty bed. There was the iron headboard and the flannel linens and the quilt crumpled at the foot of the bed. Harry was always too warm. The pillow still held the imprint of his head. His medication sat on the bedside table, next to the radio and a half-­drunk glass of water. The bureau opposite the bedside table was as old and timeworn as whatever part of Harry stored his memories. I crossed the room and opened the top drawer and noticed straightaway his knit hat was missing. Strangely, the pompom had been snipped off.

I’d passed the previous evening as I had so many others before it, sitting at his bedside, reminding him of who we used to be, feeling at times that I was not only disappearing into the darkness of his mind but from the world altogether. It was no less strange that evening than it had been at the start of his confinement to see a man still so bodily strong becoming a child again. No less strange and no less unbearable.

Of that last night we spent together, I cannot say he exhibited any signs he was about to undertake a disappearance, no word spoken or gesture made that gave me pause. He did nothing that might’ve forewarned me. That evening I only hoped, as I did every night, that when he finally fell to sleep he would do so with the knowledge of my love, and that when he dreamt it would be of peaceful things.

It was Doctor Ingebrigsten—­who grew up in Misquah, went to medical school in Minneapolis, and returned to Arrowhead County because, she said, this place needed one of its own to care for its sickly—­who described to Gus and me what it would become like for Harry. “You and I,” she said, “we see our past as though it were a bright summer day. The trees green, flowers blossoming, the water shining blue. Harry’s going to start seeing less and less of his past until—­sadly—­everything will seem as though it’s taking place in a nighttime blizzard in the dead of winter.” She said this on a September morning, with the trees in full autumn blaze—­our loveliest time of year—­and I wept to think that the man I loved would never register that beauty again, even if he lived another ten years.

That same morning Doctor Ingebrigsten told me the best thing I could do for Harry was to be with him. Sit at his bedside and talk to him and tell him I still loved him. To hold him among us for as long as I could. So I did. Of course I did.

And now it’s been half of a winter since Harry vanished, and I can finally rest my thoughts. I ought to feel relief. Of this I’m sure. But do you know what it’s like to hold proof of the last heartache you’ll ever know in your own raw hands? I hadn’t known, either, not until Gus delivered Harry’s red hat yesterday morning, a cork bobber sewed on where the pompom should’ve been. Gus’s stories and that damn hat—­handed to me like a verdict and never spoken of again—­these things have made of my heart what this season has of the splintering pines along the river.

Reading Group Guide

The introduction, author biography, discussion questions, and suggested reading that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Wintering, the captivating new novel by Peter Geye.

1. What is “wintering” and why do you think the author chose this term as the title for his book? Why does Harry want his son, Gus, to go with him into the wilderness and why does he choose to embark on this journey as the winter season is approaching?

2. At the opening of the novel, Berit Lovig says that “two stories began” the day that Gus came to see her in November. She says, “One of them was new and the other as old as this land itself.” (5) What does she mean by this? What is the story that is “as old as [the] land itself”?

3. Who reveals or narrates the two stories and who is the audience? Do you believe that they are reliable narrators? Why or why not? Does any single point of view seem to dominate the text? Explain. Does the book ultimately answer the question of why these characters wish to exchange their stories?

4. Explore the setting of the book. How does the setting mirror or otherwise help to reveal the psychological and emotional states of the characters who inhabit it? What other information does the setting allow us to access about the characters that we would perhaps not be privy to if they lived in a different place? How does “wilderness” come to work symbolically or metaphorically? What key themes does the setting help to reveal?

5. Why is Gus scared before he sets out into the wilderness with his father? What does he believe that they risk leaving behind? Why does Gus choose to go with his father rather than attend one of the colleges that has accepted him?

6. According to Berit, what is most important to the inhabitants of Gunflint? Does the rest of the novel support or disprove this view? Where in the novel can we see evidence of what means the most to Berit’s neighbors and family?

7. Gus tells Berit that “history and memory aren’t the same thing.” (76) What does he say is the difference between the two? Do you agree with him?

8. Why does Gus go after the bear even though he knows it could kill him? What does he cite as his primary motivation or influence? Does he seem to have learned anything from this experience? Is he changed by it? If so, how?

9. What does Gus say is his religion (138)? How does he come to find this religion and what feelings accompany it? Do any of the other characters seem to share this religion? In what ways?

10. What does the book seem to suggest about our relationship with the unknown past? How does Harry’s view of his mother or Gus’s view of his grandmother, for instance, change as secrets are revealed? What, if anything, changes for Gus and Berit as they exchange stories and expose secrets? Does the book ultimately suggest whether it is better to face the past or to accept that there are things that can’t be known?

11. How are Gus and Harry changed by their experience in the wilderness? Berit asks Gus if he believes that Harry’s time in the borderlands took his true nature away from him. How does Gus respond? Would you say that the experience altered the true nature of either of the men? Why or why not?

12. Although the novel centers on the story of Gus and Harry, Berit also reflects on her own life. How does she feel about the choices she has made? What regrets does she have? How has hearing Gus’s story affected her? What does the story make her wonder about or reconsider?

13. How does the book also create a dialogue around the idea of civilization through its exploration of wilderness? How does the story of Charlie Aas and the Aas family inform this dialogue? What does the book suggest is the true definition of civilization?

14. Consider the theme of discovery and its variations—­rediscovery, self-­discovery, and so on. What are the main characters in the novel hoping to discover? What discoveries do they make? What causes them to rediscover or reevaluate what they think they know about themselves and others?

15. What is the story that Berit says was the “prologue” to Harry’s life? (295) Does learning this story from Berit change Gus’s opinion of his father? Does it change your own assessment of Harry’s character? What does this indicate about the way that we come to know other people and the judgments we make?

16. Gus and Berit tell stories to each other about Harry; both feel that they have information of which the other is unaware. What does the novel reveal about storytelling and perspective? How does their respective storytelling shape or influence the other’s perspective? What does this suggest about the tradition of storytelling?

17. Explore the novel’s theme of crossing borders. How do the characters in the novel cross boundaries or otherwise reach beyond that with which they are familiar? What inspires them to challenge these boundaries? How are they changed by their experiences of physical and/or psychological boundary crossing?

Editorial Reviews

A book about love and revenge, families and small towns, history and secrets . . . a deftly layered and beautifully written novel that owes as much to William Faulkner and it does to Jack London. . . . Make no mistake: Geye is a skillful, daring writer with talent to burn. Simultaneously epic in scope and deeply personal, Wintering is a remarkable portrait of the role that one’s environment—and neighbors—can play in shaping character and destiny.” —Skip Horack, The San Francisco Chronicle

“Suspense, unforgettable characters, powerful landscapes, and even more powerful emotions.” —John Timpane, The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Gripping. . . A page-turning cross between Jack London’s naturalism and Jim Harrison’s poetic symbolism. . . . [Stitches] together two frequently dissociated strands in American literature: its dramas of beset manhood and its domestic chronicles. . . Wintering gives us both, vividly imagining an outward bound journey that eventually brings us home to a fuller understanding of ourselves.” —Mike Fischer, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“If Jack London’s Yukon tales married William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County’s blood battles, their thematic and geographic offspring would be Peter Geye’s Wintering. . . . There’s a lot to love about this novel: the beauty of the wilderness, the tenderness of relationships, the craft. . . . [There] is the feeling you get at the funeral of a loved one—how you ache to hear the stories you never knew so that you might round out the man. . . . But in the sharing of stories there is healing, if not complete comprehension—and that, it seems to me, is the point and triumph of this novel.” —Christine Brunkhorst, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Geye’s assured narrative gradually unfolds a Jack London-like tale of survival blended with a Richard Russo-like picture of small-town intrigue. . . . Geye dips into history with ease and comes up with a story as contemporary as anything flashing across our screens today. Wintering is a novel for the ages.” —Bruce Jacobs, Shelf Awareness

“Beautifully written [and] supported by immaculately conceived characters [and] Geye’s instinctive sense of narrative movement. . . . The relatively small and enclosed community is Geye’s perfect laboratory for exploring human nature.” —Brad Hooper, Booklist
 
“Geye’s powerful third novel journeys to the frozen places in the American landscape and the human heart. . . . Capturing the strength and mystery of characters who seem inextricable from the landscape, Geye’s novel is an unsentimental testament to the healing that’s possible when we confront our bleakest places.” —Publishers Weekly

“Reminiscent of Jack London’s 'To Build a Fire' and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, Geye’s narrative takes us deep into both human and natural wilderness.” —Kirkus Reviews

“In one beautifully etched sentence after another, Peter Geye’s Wintering explores the remote wilderness of Minnesota, and the even more remote and mysterious wilderness of family history.  I found myself lost inside it, in all the best ways a reader can be lost.” —Alix Ohlin 

“There’s no greater literary pleasure than watching a master emerge. I’ve witnessed Peter Geye grow into that distinction for coming on two decades now. All I can say is Wintering proves his finest, most powerful work yet.” —Joseph Boyden

“The last time I read a literary thriller so profound Cormac McCarthy’s name was on its spine. But Peter Geye is his own man and Wintering is as unique and menacingly beautiful as its Minnesota borderlands setting.” —Richard Russo

“An elegant, quietly profound, and harrowing novel. I loved this book.” —Emily St. John Mandel

“Peter Geye’s third novel is a work of great power and primal beauty, an epic literary journey into the forbidding wilds of Northern Minnesota Geye is a masterful writer whose elegiac prose captures both the holiness and brutality of nature. Wintering is a stunning book, one that takes hold of the reader from the first haunting line and never lets go.” —Amy Greene

“In starkly elegant prose that matches neatly the deep northern landscape in which it's set, Wintering is a vivid portrait of fathers and sons, generational battles of love and exhaustion, forgiveness and mystery. The bonds crack, shimmer, and hold, like ice, like granite ledges. Peter Geye writes with a nigh-mythic force. An extraordinary novel.” —Jeffrey Lent

From the Publisher

2016-03-16
A father and son bond through several months of self-exile in the remote borderlands of northern Minnesota. Geye has chosen a complex narrative strategy, one that mirrors the complexity of the relationships he dramatizes. At the center is Gustav "Gus" Eide, who's distraught at the disappearance of his father, Harry. Gus goes to see Berit Lovig, the narrator of the story and Harry's former lover, to tell her the story of another time Harry disappeared, 33 years earlier, in the winter of 1963-64. At that time Harry and 18-year-old Gus take a canoe trip northward, following the treks previously done by ancient voyageurs, whose fierce independence Harry has come to admire. Unbeknownst to Gus, who thinks they're taking their voyage into the wilderness to test themselves, Harry has another motive—to escape the unfortunately named Charlie Aas, a local big man about town but also a bully and the secret lover of Harry's wife, Lisbet. Leaving at the time of year they do, Harry and Gus find the elements lined up against them—ice and snow are among their greatest threats—but Geye is interested in conflicts between men as well as between man and nature, because Harry is convinced that Charlie will be tracking them. And sure enough, eventually Charlie shows up—and he's both angry and aggressive. As Harry and Gus square off against him, the reader feels that civilization is a very good thing indeed. The confrontation is dramatic and violent and leads to a secret father and son share for years. As the story unfolds in the present day, Gus, now a husband and father himself, reveals his intuitions about Harry and Berit's relationship. Reminiscent of Jack London's "To Build a Fire" and Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, Geye's narrative takes us deep into both human and natural wilderness.

Kirkus Reviews