cover image Summer at Little Lava: A Season at the Edge of the World

Summer at Little Lava: A Season at the Edge of the World

Charles Fergus. North Point Press, $24 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-374-52552-1

Seeking a refuge to heal his grief over the death of his mother, who was stabbed by a burglar in her Pennsylvania home, Fergus took his wife, Nancy, and their eight-year-old son, Will, to unlikely Iceland for three months in the summer of 1996. The respite did its work. Living in a friend's abandoned, isolated concrete house called Little Lava, the family spent its days hiking; Fergus (Swamp Screamer) also fished and kayaked. He writes lyrically about the natural world the family encountered, birds, in particular eagles, volcanic mountains, marshes. The emptiness of the landscape reflected Fergus's own emptiness, yet Little Lava, bound by marsh, mountains and sea, proved hospitable. He fills his book with Icelandic folklore and tells us about the country's history and simple economy in which people depend on farming and fishing for their livelihood. In that summer's perpetual light, tragedy again visited the family, however, when a young niece was killed in the explosion of a TWA aircraft off the coast of New York. But most vivid here is the natural world, written about with such vibrancy readers will yearn to visit this land at the edge of nowhere. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)