Wolf Winter

The best version of this book is a historical fiction murder mystery. It still wouldn't really work for me, it's a little grim and dark for my tastes, but it would work better. In 1717, a Finnish family, Paavo, Maija, and their daughters Frederika and Dorotea, arrive as settlers in Swedish Lapland (as I remember from reading Stolen a couple months back, this is not the correct term...the people are Sami and the region is Sapmi, but Lapps/Lapland are the terms the characters would have used). Shortly after their arrival, the girls find a murdered man in a clearing. The plot centers around the puzzle of his death, which resonates not just among the family, but among the fellow homesteaders on Blackasen mountain, the Sami people who range through the area in the winter, and the religious authority in the area, a priest who had once been a close friend of the King but has wound up in an isolated, frigid hamlet. This all is executed proficiently enough, with Ekback's depiction of the tensions that can arise in the wilderness during the endless night and cold of an Arctic winter, particularly after a gruesome death, feeling very real. But the novel also features a supernatural element, and this was where it faltered for me. It was well-written enough, but it doesn't really go anywhere, and I wished she'd either excised it or leaned into the magical realism of it all harder. Perhaps if it had been cut, it would have made room for a richer discussion of the political situation in Sweden at the time, which was a major factor in the plot but was never really appropriately explained in the text. I appreciated the character work that Ekback pulled off, I definitely got invested in all of the protagonists and their various plights. Like I said, the overall grimness of tone (which is relatively common in Scandinavian literature) didn't really work for me, nor did the pacing, with the plot being resolved very quickly at the very end.

I've rewritten this review a few times now. I wish I wasn't struggling so much to explain how much I love this book. I think it's because it feels so important to me that nothing I write seems good enough. That's how highly I hold Wolf Winter in my heart.

Wolf Winter is haunting. That's the best word I can think of to describe it. It's one of those books that stick with you, churns in your mind while you're reading it, and makes you feel bitter about people.

As someone who typically struggles with historical fiction, I was surprised by how hooked I got with this book. Each character had to navigate social norms and expectations while investigating the mystery, which added a layer of difficulty for them that I don't often see thrillers explore. On top of that, even the weather is oppressive, a looming threat to their survival. Everyone is struggling so hard to simply just survive that it becomes easy to see why so many crimes back then went unsolved.

All of this culminates into something heartbreaking and distressing because it mirrors the way people handle such situations even today. I know that sounds vague (I'm trying to avoid spoilers) but once you've read the book you'll get it.

Anyway, this review has been all over the place so I'm just going to leave it at this: read the book, it's amazing, especially during the winter months with a nice warm drink to keep you company.