Kingdomtide
I’m just going to tell you: Kingdomtide by Rye Curtis is the book you need to read now. It just is. The premise: 72-year-old Cloris Waldrip is the sole survivor of a small plane crash. She survives approximately three months in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana, while park ranger Debra Lewis simultaneously believes she is alive and (stubbornly?) continues her quest to find her. This is a story about resilience, loneliness, how we develop – and then maybe debunk – our belief systems, how little we may know ourselves, and how we make decisions...especially under pressure (either life-or-death pressure or societal pressure).
The plot flows beautifully, the descriptions of small-town “church ladies” are perfect, and Curtis’ prose has a bit of a Leif Enger vibe. Really, read it. I like to mark up books, but this one is from the library. So now I have a 4-page-long document of quotes from Kingdomtide. Like this: “As far as I can tell, we sure do all cause a good deal of trouble trying to get what we want. We are all of us the benefactors of someone else’s disadvantage some way or another, whether we would call it that or not. We take turns being bound to secret altars, and we take turns wielding the sacrificial knife.”
{{For a slightly more simplistic (but still wonderful) take on resilience in the face of hardship, I’d like to suggest Brittany Runs a Marathon, streaming on Amazon.}}
Edit: I also ended up writing about Kingdomtide on the good ol’ blog. You can read that post about this book + The Secret Lives of Bees here.
originally published on instagram