Pearly Everlasting by Tammy Armstrong

[gilda_elise]

In a narrative sown with rural folklore and superstition, Pearly Everlasting is an enchanting woodland Gothic about the triumph of good over evil and the forgotten beauty of the natural world.

New Brunswick, 1934. When a cook in a logging camp finds an orphaned baby bear, he brings it home to his wife, who names the cub Bruno and raises him alongside her newborn daughter, Pearly Everlasting.

During the Great Depression, amidst severe poverty and dangerous work conditions, Pearly’s family and the woodsmen form a close-knit community that embraces the tame, young bear in their camp.

But when a new camp supervisor—who increasingly endangers the lives of the loggers for profit—arrives, he is less accepting of Bruno. When the supervisor is found dead, Bruno is blamed, and soon after is kidnapped and sold to an animal trader. Pearly, now a teenager, has no choice but to find Bruno and sets off on a hazardous solo journey through the forest—her first trip to “the Outside”—to rescue him.

To make her way home again, Pearly will have to tramp more than fifty miles through ice and snow, elude the malevolent spirit of Jack in the Dark and confront the modern-day cruelty of villagers fearful of her family’s way of life. Over those harrowing miles, Pearly will discover what it really means to be family to a bear.

I loved the relationship between Pearly and Bruno, but sometimes the story seemed to meander. But the writing was poetic in its description of their love; it’s the heart of the story.

I think I enjoyed the first part of the book the best, though always in the back of my mine was dreading the kidnapping of Bruno. How will it be done? How will Pearly get him back? Pearly will do anything to get Bruno back, and pretty much does.

Because the only world she’s ever known is the logging camp where she and her family live, her journey away from it is probably more dangerous than for someone who knows the way. It’s just another example of what she will do to get her “brother” back.

Based on a photograph taken in 1903 of a woman nursing her newborn daughter alongside an orphan bear cub.






Mount TBR 2025 Book Links


Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

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25. A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen



26. Lost and Found by Marilyn Harris
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30. Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next #2) by Jasper Fforde
31. Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky
32. Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
33. Pearly Everlasting by Tammy Armstrong

Comments

[tinny]

This somehow reminds me of the John Irving novel about the circus and the bear? Hotel New Hampshire? Not that I've read that, lol, but the whole vibe sounds like John Irving. ;)

[gilda_elise]

I'd never heard of that book (though I've heard of John Irving. *g*) I think there's a thing about bears that seem to appeal to people. They seem cuddly, even though we know they're not.