Intersection Column | Shadow Country

by Cheryl Grey Bostrom

My four younger siblings and I were weaned on shadows, then grew up with them in the area around our little town of Port Angeles. In northwest Washington State, seven miles from the Elwha Valley—the setting of my new novel—our town clung to hillsides between the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the rugged Olympic Mountains, where shadows were ever-present. Not only the physical shadows from heavy conifer forests, moody weather, and the mountains’ shady north slopes, but emotional and spiritual ones, as well. Some shadows skittered past, briefly dimming the landscape or my mind. Others, born in the brokenness of my nuclear family, hung heavy as the storm clouds that parked over that jagged range, frightening and bewildering me for entire seasons of my childhood.

It took years, but in timing I now understand as perfect, Christ radically re-purposed both those seen and unseen shadows, steeping them in His perspective and instruction, then enabling me to write books layered with the redemption and restoration He gave me. They’re stories infused with hope that’s confirmed and illustrated by the natural world in which those stories take place.

Take my debut novel Sugar Birds, for example. After she accidentally lights a tragic fire, guilt and shame drive young Aggie into both emotional and physical wilderness—like those I have known—until love and forgiveness bring her home.

In my second novel Leaning on Air, autistic Burnaby’s faith and unwavering love carry his brokenhearted, wayward wife, Celia, through loss as vast as the Palouse wheat country in which they live and into intimacy she’d never have imagined possible. While my husband’s not autistic, he is, like Burnaby, a scientist who has loved me into oneness patterned on the Trinity, which Burnaby first understood through quantum entanglement in the created world.

But it’s in What the River Keeps, my new novel, that my characters encounter the deepest sorts of shadows head-on. Hildy has been robbed and lied to in ways readers won’t anticipate. And in an historically accurate rendering, the Lower Elwha Klallams, who live on the river, have seen their magnificent fishery and their tribe held captive by illicit dams for a hundred years. All have experienced personal and cultural betrayal most of us would consider humanly impossible to forgive.

But then—though the process is wrenching—those same characters learn to do exactly that.

Here’s the novel’s gist: After years away, reclusive Pacific Northwest biologist Hildy Nybo returns to the site of her confusing childhood on the Elwha River to join scientists overseeing the demolition of the river’s dams. The wonder of the valley she loves collides with dark secrets in her unreliable memory—generational deceptions she must untangle before she loses her mind.

Fortunately, as the dams fall and the river re-wilds, love gradually overrides Hildy’s shadows—and offers her freedom through truth and forgiveness.

This tale is especially close to my heart. While it’s the most difficult story I’ve ever written, I must say that the ending is my all-time favorite, and I cannot read it without tears of the very best sort. While the details of Hildy’s narrative are vastly different from my own, both Hildy and I engage and study God’s first book: Nature. Our encounters with spiritual darkness bear likeness to one another’s, and her trek to beautiful healing parallels my own.

We’ve both learned that even the most fortified dams can fall, and when they do, holy freedom waits.

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About the Author

A keen student of both nature and the human heart, Cheryl Grey Bostrom captures the mystery and wonder of both in her surprising, award-winning novels. An avid birder and nature photographer, she lives in rural Washington State with her veterinarian husband.

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About the Book

Behind her professional brilliance as a biologist, Hildy’s reclusive private life reflects a childhood fraught with uncertainty. When she accepts a job near her childhood home, a new neighbor captures Hildy’s attention. Now a few years beyond a tragedy that brought him to his knees, Luke recognizes a kindred soul in Hildy. Together, they build a relationship that dismantles the shadows of their pasts.