For this week’s ArtZany! Radio show we rebroadcast an interview I aired last summer with author Peter Geye about his novel Wintering. This spring Wintering won the Minnesota Book Award for Novel & Short Story!
The event dates mentioned during the interview have past, but now the paperback edition of Wintering is available from Penguin Random House! This winter tale makes a great summer read!
ArtZany! – Radio for the Imagination 05/26/2017
Peter Geye was born and raised in Minneapolis where continues to live. He receieved his BA from the University of Minnesota, his MFA from the University of New Orleans, and his PhD from the Western Michigan University, where he taught creative writing and was the editor of Third Coast. He has also been a bartender, bookseller, banker, copywriter and cook. He is also the author of the novels Safe from the Sea and The Lighthouse Road. petergeye.com
Wintering –published by Alfred A. Knopf/Penguin Random House by Peter Geye
When an ill Harry Eide goes missing from his sickbed into the northern MN winter, he’s assumed dead. As his son, Gus, awaits word of his father’s fate, he tells the story of the last time Harry took off into the wilderness in winter, pretending at a father-son trip to reenact the ancient voyageurs’ journeys of discovery with Gus in tow. But Harry was actually escaping Charlie Aas, his rival in life and in love – and Charlie tracked them on their journey. What unfolded in those woods has long been speculated over by the town, but remained a secret between Gus and Harry—one that is finally coming to light. Evocative and spare, WINTERING is a tale of a father, and a son’s, search for love, truth and understanding in the muted north of Minnesota.
Kirkus says “reminiscent of Jack London’s ‘To Build a Fire’ and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, Geye’s narrative takes us deep into both human and natural wilderness.” And Richard Russo says “The last time I read a literary thriller so profound Cormac McCarthy’s name was on its spine. But Peter Geye is his own man and Wintering is as unique and menacingly beautiful as its Minnesota borderlands setting.”
