A BookPage Best Book of the Year It is 1938 when Eveline, a young bride, follows her husband, Emil, into the Minnesota wilderness. Though their cabin is rundown, they have a river full of fish, a garden out back, and a baby boy named Hux.  But when Emil leaves to take care of his sick father, a dangerous stranger arrives, fracturing their small family forever and leaving Hux to grow up wondering if the wrongs of the past can ever be mended.   Set before a backdrop of vanishing forest, Rebecca Rasmussen has written a luminous and emotionally charged novel about how one defining moment can echo through generations. "A large-hearted story of resilience, hope and forgiveness deep in the wilds of Minnesota." —Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train     “ Evergreen cements Rasmussen’s reputation as one of our most talented new writers.” — BookPage    "A deeply moving novel of mothers and daughters—and mothers and sons—and the ties that bind.” —Chris Bohjalian, author of Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands   “A book worthy of a blanket, hot cocoa, and a lit fireplace.” — San Francisco Book Review   " Evergreen is a gem of a novel. The story unfolds with the potency and certainty of fable and explores, with exquisite grace, the redemptive power of love." —Tara Conklin, author of The House Girl “ Evergreen reads like a brilliant collaboration between a novelist and a naturalist. Rebecca Rasmussen’s stunning eye for detail is perfectly matched by her understanding of how lives turn in an instant, decisions shape distant generations, and sometimes, if we’re fortunate, loyalties survive to save us against all odds.” —Robin Black, author of Life Drawing “Hope and the redeeming power of love are embedded in the fiber of this story: if it makes you weep, you weep from sorrow and joy at once.” — Santa Fe New Mexican “In an icy rural setting in northern Minnesota, several women struggle with the demands of motherhood. . . . Rasmussen crafts a world where [abandonment] is too complicated for quick dismissal or conclusion”— Minneapolis Star-Tribune “Rasmussen, with a deft touch, incites wave after wave of tension in a story that never allows the reader to forget just how much strength lies in the female spirit . . . Reminiscent of Bonnie Jo Campbell and Marilynne Robinson. . . . A novel that proves that Rasmussen’s literary star continues to rise in a way that is anything but quiet.” — Wisconsin State Journal Review “Evergreen  is superbly written with engaging characters, realistic dialogue, and an honest look at what love and belonging means to a family.” — Portland Book Review “Rasmussen has been steadily crafting a unique brand of Midwestern literature . . . writ[ing] with wisdom and compassion about the people and places that shape us, for better or worse.” — Booklist   “ Evergreen is a beautifully written novel about love, family, perseverance, and grace. Similar to [Rasmussen’s] debut novel, The Bird Sisters , Evergreen hits hard with delicacy and strength.”— The Bay View Compass (Milwaukee, WI) “In powerful, spare prose, Rasmussen shows the long-term effects of a heartbroken mother’s decision. . . . Readers will find many reasons to root for good to win out, just as they will find much to admire in the well-drawn characters who want to belong, to live, and love, in the forest of Evergreen ” —Historical Novel Society Rebecca Rasmussen is the author of the novel  The Bird Sisters.  Her stories have appeared in or won prizes from  TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, Glimmer Train, The Mid-American Review,  among other journals. She was born and raised in the Midwest. Currently, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter and teaches English part-time at UCLA. 1 Eveline LeMay came after the water. She arrived on a cool morning in early September, asleep in a rowboat without paddles as if she knew the river currents would carry her past the tamarack and black-spruce forest, around Bone Island, a fen, and a bog, all the way to Evergreen and her new husband, Emil, who was waiting for her on the rocky shore. The flood had delayed Eveline’s trip north two months and forced her to travel by boat since the dirt roads had been washed away and no plans were made to restore them. Emil had sent word for her via the forest service to stay with her parents in Yellow Falls, a lumber town twenty miles south of Evergreen, until the water receded because he was living on the roof of their cabin, subsisting on whatever happened to float by. The newspapers blamed the flood on nature, but everyone knew the government had been building a dam to harness the power of the Snake and Owl Rivers in order to, in their words, bring light to all that was dark, but in everyone else’s: to build a paper mill and clear-cut the forests. “Mein Liebe,” Emil said, and Eveline opened her gray eyes. “I lost the paddles,” she said, sitting up in the rowboat, stiff from floating all night. On either side