Synopsis
April 1943. In the bloody turmoil of war, John Easley, a journalist mourning his lost brother, is driven to expose a hidden and growing conflict: the Japanese invasion and occupation of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. But when his plane is shot down he must either surrender or struggle to survive in a harsh wilderness.
Three thousand miles to the south, Helen Easley cannot accept her husband's disappearance-an absence that exposes her sheltered, untested life. Desperate to find and be reunited with him, she sets out on a remarkable journey from the safety of her Seattle home to the war in the north.
An evocative, richly atmospheric tale of life and death, commitment and sacrifice, The Wind Is Not a River, perfect for fans of Cold Mountain, is a gripping story of survival that illuminates the fragility of life and the fierce power of love.
'Beautifully written, lyrical and elegiac, The Wind Is Not A River is a novel you must read . . . John Easley's struggle to survive and his wife Helen's struggle to find him form the most triumphant and heartbreaking love story I've read in years' David Vann, author of LEGEND OF A SUICIDE
Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, January 2014: At the start of this ambitious and earnest novel, a World War II journalist named John Easley parachutes safely from his doomed plane and finds himself on the Japanese-occupied Aleutian island of Attu, "unaccountably, alive and whole." Adds our narrator: "And so it begins." Indeed it does. Like all great novels, The Wind Is Not a River (a vague title that doesn't serve its story well enough) is many things at once: a mystery, a war story, a love story, and, at its core, a tale of survival. Scenes alternate between Easley and his wife, Helen, who leaves their Seattle home to join an Alaska-bound USO troupe, hoping to somehow find him. While Helen's efforts are a necessary counter-balance to Easley's days of strife, the scenes on Attu are the most compelling, and heartbreaking. In fact, the island itself becomes a character, a desolate, ancient, grumpy mound of ice and rock, sand and grass. Easley joins forces with a fellow survivor, and, like Tom Hanks in Castaway, they craft a makeshift home in a cave, foraging for seaweed, mussels, the occasional fish or sea bird. Both men are soon wasting away, in mind and body. Payton pens some lovely, sober moments. Scanning the horizon for ships, Easley sees an empty sea and "only smug birds skirting the shore. More of nothing, nothing more." Though we learn Easley is mourning a younger brother, killed in the war in Europe, he is initially unknowable. Even his comrade wonders, "who the hell are you?" In his fight for survival, sustained by an unearthed photograph of a young Aleutian woman, Easley finds an answer to that question. --Neal Thompson
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