Nobody Gets Out Alive

From Newman, whose memoir Still Points North was a finalist for the National Book Critic Circle’s John Leonard Prize, this startling debut collection highlights women struggling to get by in rugged Alaska, facing not just fierce animals and sometimes bitter cold but the travails of family and particularly tensions with difficult men. One woman who’s survived five husbands prepares to sell her house on the lake, ingeniously preparing a fancy meal of caribou burgers for prospective buyers who will likely want to tear it down and rebuild; she’s always cared for black labs, and as she works, a man she’s been crushing on drops by with another dog that needs tending. Elsewhere, a single mother traversing Alaska with her two children meets up meaningfully with two neecent college graduates also trekking through the wilderness, and a man who suspects his wife of infidelity puts the entire family in danger by taking them to a cabin in the dead of winter. Throughout, the language is both taut and ruminative, funny and hard-edged, with the characters tough, good-natured, and tested but unbent by life.