BI author writes most ‘personal’ book yet
Published 1:30 am Thursday, December 26, 2024
“Bainbridge Island. That wooded little utopia of 6,000 adventurous souls across Elliott Bay, 9 miles and 35 minutes by ferry from Seattle—with its offbeat village charm and its wide-open spaces, its untapped potential and affordable real estate.”
That passage may provoke self-conscious grimaces from newer islanders. But those who have lived on BI for generations will likely nod and smile in nostalgic recognition at that observation, made in 1959 from a Seattle resident’s perspective.
It was written by Jonathan Evison, an islander since 1976, in his newest novel, “The Heart of Winter,” and the second of his nine published novels to take place in his hometown. It’s being released Jan. 7, 2025, as he will be at Eagle Harbor Book Co., 157 Winslow Way E, at 6:30 p.m. Go to eagleharborbooks.com for details.
His first BI novel was 2018’s “Lawn Boy,” which cast a gently satiric eye on the island’s newer, wealthier class and swelling bedroom-community populace through the eyes of a landscaper tending to some of its pricier properties. “The Heart of Winter” looks more lovingly on BI’s more-rural past through the eyes of Abe and Ruth Winter, a young married couple at the time of their move across Puget Sound.
“The island that Abe and Ruth come to in the early 1960s had much more of a small-town vibe,” said Evison, 56. “The people who moved here moved here because they wanted to live on an island and yearned for the charms of a more-isolated small-town life with its many inconveniences.
“In ‘The Heart of Winter,’ I wanted to celebrate that place, that unique lifestyle, that very particular culture,” Evison said.
“The Heart of Winter” covers seven decades in the lives of the Winters, an opposites-attract couple who move to BI in 1960. Over the next six-plus decades, they confront one challenge after another to their comfortable-on-the-surface life: marital complacency, cultural clashes, thwarted desires, the death of a child and cancer, among many others.
It’s also a novel full of echoes from Evison’s own BI past, as the baby of the family in a single-parent household held together by the constancy of his mother’s love. And as such it’s his most personal novel yet. As he put it, “I just told my mom I’m writing the love story I wished you would have had.”
