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<\/p>\n\u201cBloom Again\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By Marybeth Holleman; University of Alaska Press, 2026; 294 pages; $95 Hardcover, $21.95 paper, $17.95 Ebook.<\/b><\/p>\n
Two middle-aged women. One an artist, the other a scientist. One lives in Alaska, the other in North Carolina. The first, empty-nester Elyse, goes to the Anchorage zoo to sit near a penned polar bear named Binky and finds her art taking an unexpected turn. The other, Astrid, a scientific paleobotanist, takes a long view of environmental change until she\u2019s swept into caring for living beings.<\/p>\n
Marybeth Holleman, an Anchorage writer whose previous books include \u201cThe Heart of the Sound,\u201d \u201cAmong Wolves\u201d and \u201ctender gravity: poems,\u201d has brought together her tremendous writing skills and her knowledge of places, science, environmental issues, art and the human heart to create a compelling novel about the forces that entwine lives and events.<\/p>\n
In the genre of climate fiction (cli-fi), writers like Margaret Atwood (\u201cOrax and Crake\u201d), Michael Crichton (\u201cState of Fear\u201d), Octavia Butler (\u201cParable of the Sower\u201d), Nathaniel Rich (\u201cOdds Against Tomorrow\u201d) and Kim Stanley Robinson (\u201cThe Ministry of the Future\u201d) most often present very dark speculative futures in a heated, storm-wracked and distressed world. Holleman has taken hold of the genre to present a less dystopian view. In her realistic portrait of life in a warming world, complex characters with plenty of doubts and fears nevertheless learn, create and find joy. <\/p>\n
Readers will recognize true places and events that exist without fabrication. Siberian hunters did visit Anchorage and talked about the Polar Bear Patrol they managed to protect both walrus coming ashore because of a lack of sea ice, and their village from polar bears attracted to the walrus. Churchill, Manitoba, does have a bear-viewing industry and a \u201cbear jail\u201d for bears that get into town trouble, and there is really such a thing as a \u201cpolar bear score card\u201d to determine a bear\u2019s body fat condition. A wildfire on the Kenai Peninsula did burn up a huge swath of dry forest, wind turbines do turn on Fire Island and endangered beluga whales frequent Turnagain Arm. <\/p>\n
Likewise, Astrid\u2019s research into fossils of lycopodium species (vascular plants related to club mosses) matches what is known of the species. Lycopods make up the oldest surviving division of vascular plants and date back more than 400 million years. Astrid, focused on basic, not applied science, collects and studies fossils in search of a missing link.<\/p>\n
Is there an agenda in \u201cBloom Again\u201d? Certainly, Holleman wants readers to understand how climate change is unleashing extreme weather, habitat loss and other catastrophes upon not just polar bears and coastal residents but all the living and non-living world. She\u2019s specific with her examples from Alaska and the world, and she\u2019s reliably accurate with the science she interweaves.<\/p>\n
Where Holleman excels is escaping the confines of climate change messaging to create a world populated by relatable people and situations. Readers will care about her well-drawn characters, not only the two women central to the story but the full cast of friends, family, colleagues, even animals and plants with key roles. Three minor characters \u2014 an older science professor, an exuberant artist and an Indigenous Siberian hunter \u2014 are particularly memorable. A North Carolina gingko tree is equally significant.<\/p>\n
The roles of science and art interplay throughout. One person praises Elyse, the artist, for her beliefs that \u201cart can reach people in ways that science can\u2019t. That it bypasses the analytical mind and goes straight to emotions and imagination, creating understanding and empathy.\u201d Her husband, on the other hand, accuses her of cheapening her art by using it for what he considers political purposes. It takes some self-examination for Elyse to reconcile her feelings about art, the art world and the role of artists. <\/p>\n
Scientist Astrid faces her own struggles within academia and with corporate influences on science funding. Among the complications in Astrid\u2019s life is her refusal to contract with an oil company that wants to show that her lycopods survived warmings and coolings over millennia and had in fact flourished during high concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Astrid thinks, \u201cWhen an oil company offers to fund climate change research, any self-respecting scientist runs screaming in the other direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, the lives of the two women eventually come together in ways that exemplify both the trials of friendship and the interconnectedness of lives, places and causes. <\/p>\n
[Book review: A journey through polar science helps explain our living world and its future<\/a>]<\/p>\n \u201cBloom Again,\u201d the book\u2019s title, resonates in many ways across the course of the story. The cover art, by Alaskan Kristin Link, is inspired by Elyse\u2019s breakthrough painting that pairs a polar bear with the invasive, aggressive and beautiful kudzu plant remembered from Elyse\u2019s childhood. <\/p>\n Holleman\u2019s prose, sentence by sentence and page by page, is as precise and evocative as any of the paintings she describes. Here\u2019s Elyse on a June day at a favorite lake: \u201cblue sky with wisps of cirrus clouds, cumulus row of lime-green birch trees, dark spikes of spruce flanked by a frothy line of willow, all mirrored in the azure lake. She wants to capture those bands of texture and light, show the perfect symmetry wedded to the tangle of cloud and forest.\u201d<\/p>\n Alaska, so rich in nonfiction and poetry, has had to date little literary fiction that shows us who we are and might be. Holleman\u2019s \u201cBloom Again\u201d is a welcome addition to our canon and an encouragement to address, with love and joy, the challenges of our time.<\/p>\n Holleman\u2019s book launch, hosted by Trustees for Alaska at Organic Oasis in Anchorage, will be Sept. 18 at 5:30 p.m. She will also be signing books at Fireside Books in Palmer on Sept. 20 from 1-4 p.m. <\/p>\n Disclaimer: Reviewer Nancy Lord and writer Marybeth Holleman are co-editors of the anthology \u201cAlaska Literary Field Guide,\u201d forthcoming from Mountaineers Books in March.<\/p>\n