The Pillagers' Guide to Arctic Pianos: A Novel

by Kendra Langford Shaw

For readers of Karen Russell, Maggie Shipstead, and Eowyn Ivey, an exuberant, highly imaginative epic about a family that settles, against all odds, in the far reaches of the Arctic and the unexpected industry that keeps them afloat for generations.

In the far reaches of the Territory of the Arctic, the Spahr family lives on a fjord accessible only by kayak and float plane, in a landscape rapidly changing as glaciers melt and sea levels rise. Their home is Jubilation House, aptly they are a family of free spirit and full-hearted love, descendants of the homesteaders who came to this place in a reckless scheme to civilize the Glacial Front. They live off the grid in a converted fisherman's shack, selling pickled octopus and sea crops, barely scraping by. With every day, their livelihood seems ever more precarious.

Then one of their few neighbors dredges up a centuries-old piano, a vestige from the original homesteading expedition, when every family was required to haul a six-hundred-pound instrument as a sign of mannerly society—almost none made it to their final destination. Now, this intricately carved beauty has emerged, perfectly preserved from the frigid Arctic waters, and the antique treasure becomes a priceless collectors’ item. A new economic boom seizes the territory—piano hunting—and the Spahrs throw themselves into the quest with full-throated aplomb. But the costs of their possible salvation soon begin to mount.

The Pillagers' Guide to Arctic Pianos travels through generations, backward to the Spahrs’ homesteader origins and forward to their descendants, eccentrics and optimists all. In a voice as buoyant and vibrant as the characters themselves, Kendra Langford Shaw gives us an unforgettable and inventive ode to the abiding love of family and pull of home, even as the home we love becomes ever more challenging to inhabit.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, Nature, Adult, Audiobook

285 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 12, 2026

Reviews

[Dee (in the Desert) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very quirky family saga type story, but way too slow & long. The setting was very cool!!

[Tala🦈 (mrs.skywalker.reads) · Rating 2 out of 5]

ambitny pomysł – arktyczna saga o rodzinie, zatopionych fortepianach i topniejącym świecie, gdzie przeszłość dosłownie wynurza się spod lodu

momentami to działa: klimat, język, wszystkie szczegóły tej osobliwej codzienności. tylko że im dalej, tym bardziej wszystko się rozpada – fabuła tonie w melodramacie (zaczęło mocno zajeżdżać kristin hannah), logika w chaosie (to przyszłość? alternatywna rzeczywistość? czy prawa fizyki istnieją?), a świat w jakiejś dziwnej kolonialnej amnezji (kompletny brak świadomości, że „native settlers” to oksymoron, zwłaszcza w amerykańskim kontekście)

potencjał ogromny, ale potrzebny byłby konkretny i nieustraszony redaktor

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book SOLELY because of the cover and then with a title like that, I was intrigued.

Sadly, this book fell short for me on multiple fronts. The pacing was SLOW and the storyline jumped everywhere. I think every single "chapter" (all of which were VERY long) was from a different person's POV except for the flashback ones from Moose. Which I think is why I enjoyed those portions of the book the most. I struggled to get through this book and was almost relived when it was over because I was having such a hard time with it. There was potential here for sure, and I don't think I would say this book is bad by any means--it just wasn't the right book for me.

[Kate (k8tsreads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

LOVE the concept of this book, didn't totally love the execution. It's set in the Arctic, and it follows the Spahr family, who live largely off the grid. Their son Finley is obsessed with hunting for lost pianos, which were brought to the Arctic by the land's original settlers because of a government incentive intended to promote art in the newly settled society. Since the pianos are artifacts of a bygone era, they can fetch a decent price from collectors/museums that are willing to buy them. When Finley and his sisters' mother dies, and they can no longer rely on the income from the charters she used to take tourists on in her plane, finding these pianos becomes even more crucial.

The timeline of the book jumps a bit all over the place - we follow the Spahrs when their mom is alive, and later in the future when she is no longer with them. We also jump back in time to learn about the Spahr's homesteading ancestor Moose, who was part of the original expeditions into the Arctic with the famous pianos.

Overall, I thought this was a cool concept, and the detailed imagery really created a vivid setting. Yet, I often felt that it was TOO detailed. I didn't know a lot of the words related to sailing and boats and planes and plants and animals, and sometimes I felt like basic actions were described in weirdly convoluted ways. I also felt that the focus on the setting really took away from the characters. There were multiple deaths in this book, and I hardly felt a thing when any of them occurred.

Maybe the "point" of the story wasn't about the characters. But if that's so, I'm not really sure what the alternative point was. So: great writing, somewhat mediocre story in my opinion. But a cool and unique concept! It might really work for others.

[M.L. Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book because of the quirky concept of hunting pianos in the arctic. Usually I stray away from multi-generational novels but this one was an absolute delicacy. I loved the build-up of Arctic culture, as it reminded me a lot of Little House on the Prairie meets Hillbilly Elegy meets—obviously—the Arctic. Farming sea crops and raising octopus as livestock was an immersive experience. And of course, every character having semi-aquatic lifestyles was beautifully rendered across the page. Each character was created with such care, it was hard to let them go, especially when tragedy struck. I loved the pianofortes as a through line throughout each generation—from the founders who brought them to the descendants who hunted, restored, and sold them. I will be keeping an eye out for more from this author.

[Lauren W · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 This was a charming read with a truly whimsical tone that I found very engaging. Getting to know each character was a highlight for me, as they felt well-developed and unique. While the first half pulled me in, the pacing slowed at parts in the latter half. There were also a few unexpected plot developments that didn't quite sit right with me; I found myself wishing for different outcomes as the story concluded. Overall, a solid 3.75-star experience and I wanted to spend more time in this world.

[AltLovesBooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Piano keys. The ivory spine of the Arctic."

Because I read so many Arctic expedition books, I'm uniquely interested in any book that references this area of the world. So imagine my surprise when I was halfheartedly browsing NetGalley and found a fiction book about a homesteading family in the Arctic making a living by selling piano parts, a quirky concept right my my wheelhouse. I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into, especially since generational family dramas aren't usually my cup of tea, but I came away from this book incredibly impressed with what I read.

The Spahr family has been homesteading off the grid in the Arctic since their ancestor, Moose, was dragged there reluctantly by his father wanting a better (read: more independent) life for them. At the time, cheap, productive land was promised to anyone willing to make the journey to claim it--provided you're willing to lug an upright piano along. The thinking was a piano meant civility, creativity, a mark of worth, so any family wanting to make this journey to create what was envisioned as an artistic community of like-minded people needed to purchase one and bring it along. So part of this book covers Moose, his family, and the others in their caravan north, and his trials along the way. The other part of this book centers around Milda, Finlay, Temperance, and their parents, descendants of Moose, scratching out a living from Jubilation House, their shelter in the Arctic. While they make a meagre living from what they harvest (octopus, kelp, various plants), What really sets their family on its fateful trajectory is the discovery of a discarded piano. The bulk of this book covers the various family members and how they approach this new industry of the Arctic, the reclamation of piano parts.

I'm gonna save you a Google, because the concept of the book was just plausible enough to make me wonder if the lugging of a piano to the Arctic was an actual thing in history. It is not, as best I can tell.

I don't normally get fully into generational dramas, but something about the Spahr family really had me interested to see how the family ended up. This story is told through chapters involving Moose (the Spahrs' ancestor), and then chapters involving various POVs from the Spahrs and (later) other families that survived. Moose's story is told fragmentally, so you don't get his conclusion until the end of the book, but I appreciated seeing various "clues" along the way from later on.

I got really invested in Milda and Finlay specifically, because (mild character motivations here) Milda never seemed to really enjoy her time at Jubilation house, yet stuck around out of a sense of familial obligation it seemed. I simultaneously wanted her to follow her dreams and leave, and also also wanted the family to stick together. Finlay was all-in on Arctic life though, and I felt like Milda stuck around to make sure he was safe. I liked Moose's POV as well, as we get to know the various families that play a part later in the book. I felt really bad for him, swept up as he was by a father who thought he knew best. I wasn't quite as in love with the later POVs, they felt not quite as established as the Spahrs, but I appreciated that they carried the story along to its end and had a purpose.

Really enjoyed this book. Tugs at the heartstrings something terrible as it goes along (MAJOR PLOT SPOILER: Finlay's death gutted me in particular), well written, just a unique story I wasn't sure what to expect going in.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a free eBook in exchange for an honest review.

[Liana Gold]

A family that settles and lives in the Arctic Territory, the fjords that is accessible only by a float place or a kayak. A landscape that is rapidly changing, glaciers melting, sea levels rising...yet they remain afloat for generations. They are the homesteaders that came to civilize the Glacial Font. One day, a centuries old piano is dug up, well preserved from Arctic waters and fully intact, an economic boom seizes the territory. The family is just trying to stay afloat at the edge of a melting world, what has this piano brought down upon them?


Many thanks to NetGalley, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor and the author, Kendra Langford Shaw for an ARC.

Publication date: May 12, 2026

[Cory Thomason · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book up at a bookstore in Park City because it had an incredible title and a beautiful cover. I told myself, “It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have very many reviews on Goodreads, you’re not a slave.” Tragically, judging this book by its cover did not lead me to joy. It had a whimsical concept and interesting setting, but the story jumped around too much for me to care about any of the characters at all. The author tried to paint a picture of multiple generations of a family, and the second I would have an inkling of care for the story being told, the character would disappear never to return. I wanted to be compelled by the world that the author created, but outside of a few really profound paragraphs, I was mostly bored waiting for the story to finish.

[Dana K · Rating 3 out of 5]

{3.5 stars}

Thanks to Pantheon Books for the gifted copy. All opinions below are my own.

This story follows multiple generations of a family in the Arctic as they struggle to find their place and survive in a harsh world. The modern story follows three siblings as they live in their stilted house in fjord accessible only by plane and kayak. They search the landscape for abandoned pianos worth big money based on their parts. Their ancestor Moose, came to this challenging place as a young child with his mother and stepfather hauling their piano. Pianos were required of family's claiming land to prove they were "civilized" so great lengths were taken to move the beheamoth's through the rough terrain ultimately leading to them being abandoned. We get those two timelines and a future one filled with quirky antics, atmospheric descriptions of arctic life and some very hard lessons about survival and grief.

I wanted to love this one more than I did. Once I was over the wonder of it all, it didn't have nearly enough plot for me. Also, I didn't really resonate with any of the characters. It might have been a me thing more than it being an unreadable book but it just felt really meandering at times.

[Maddie Marriott · Rating 4 out of 5]

my imagination feels stretched like a big balloon (complimentary)

the sheer inundation of characters and timelines dilutes the story a tad, but it’s beautiful

[Of Paper & Planes · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Homesteaders were not apt to favor logic over fancy—they were glittery idealists, philosophers, dreamers. If they paused to consider the folly of their dreams they would probably never have left home.”

I picked up “The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos” because of the title alone. Well, that and the stunning cover of course. I finished it because Kendra Langford Shaw turned out to be exactly the kind of writer who could live up to it.

The story follows various members of the Spahr family, spread across generations, and their iconic homestead: Jubilation House. A family of eccentrics and optimists, they spend their days creating a life on an Arctic fjord and hunting for centuries-old pianos on the sea floor. The tale is told in multi-POV across timelines and I was enchanted by both the intricacies of the Spahr’s modern homespun life and the adventure their ancestors embarked on to settle the untamed Arctic wilds. This is a stunning debut from an author I hope to see much more of in the future.

The first thing that hits you about this book is the voice: unmitigated, fresh, fully committed whimsy. With characters named Moose and Maple, places like Disillusionment Bay and Resurrection Mountains, and a sea lion that goes by Abraham Lincoln, it’s immediately clear that this is a wildly imaginative novel. Yet, just when you settle into its buoyancy, Shaw drops a simple sentence of devastating truth that stops you in your tracks. It’s an elegant contrast: lyrical and playful prose punctuated by moments of stark profundity. The novel’s whimsy earns its weight. I was surprised by how much this stylistic approach got under my skin, but weeks after completion, I still can’t stop thinking about this book.

Jubilation House functions as a character in its own right: shaped by time, by weather, by the warming Arctic waters that are simultaneously the family’s salvation and their slow undoing. The setting is lush and vivid: a house on stilts, an octopus herd penned in old submarines, travel by float plane and kayak. There’s a clear climate change underpinning; glacial warming serves as both plot engine and atmospheric context, though I found myself more moved by the conversations about family than the environmental commentary. Over time, place and legacy intertwine, with Jubilation House reflecting the way a changing landscape can shape a family’s identity across generations.

At its heart, “The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos” is a story about what families pass down across generations—not just pianos, pickled octopus, and fjord-front property, but stubbornness, hope, and the peculiar magic of inherited dreams. The multi-timeline structure serves as the novel’s emotional backbone: traveling simultaneously through the past, present, and future of one family. The story refuses to tie everything up neatly. Families are messy; legacy is messy. But ultimately, the family inheritance is love for each other and hope for a better tomorrow.

My one minor critique is also the inevitable cost of such an ambitious undertaking: with so many characters spanning generations and timelines, it can be difficult to keep everyone straight, particularly when family surnames repeat across centuries. While the settings are richly detailed, many characters are left undescribed entirely. Though occasionally disorienting, this is an expected pitfall for a novel this expansive, and did not take away from the overall magic of the story for me.

There are many books these days that are so formulaic as to lose all impact; “The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos” is not one of those books. Joyful, strange, and devastating in turn, this is a debut written by someone who clearly loves language, family, the Earth, and the near-comically stubborn human insistence on building home in impossible places. This story is for readers who love sprawling family sagas and who try to incorporate as much whimsy into their lives as possible. Shaw has crafted an ode to the abiding, irrational, magnificent love we carry for family and place, and insists that even as the world changes around us, the things we build together are worth preserving.

Thank you to Pantheon via NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest opinions.

[Kim Novak (The Reading Rx) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has got to be one of the most unique books I have ever read. The storyline and worldbuilding are utterly charming. It makes me want to go out and hunt for pianos in the wild arctic and farm octopi and gnaw on sundried seaweed while gazing at moose. I didn't expect it to break my heart, but it did.

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Pantheon and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

[Linda Loretz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The publisher’s description of this book states that it is for fans of Karen Russell. Since I have read and enjoyed two of Russell’s books, I decided to give it a try. Kendra Langford Shaw does indeed treat the human condition similarly to the way Russel does. The storyline and preposterous situations also remind me of Russel. The novel begins with the introduction of a contemporary family living off the grid in the remote Territory of the Arctic. Finley, nine-year-old son of Viola and Frye Spahr, almost drowns while trying to retrieve a piano from Disillusionment Bay. Early in the novel, Viola, the pilot of the floatplane that provides income for the family, dies and leaves her husband and three children, Finley, Milda, and Temperance, to care for each other as well as their sinking home and their octopuses, sea lions, and other local resources used for food and trade.

Little makes sense until we learn that the first settlers of the area, who came with promises of land guaranteed by the Homestead Act, traveled with their valuable pianos. The piano represents the cultural refinement that homesteaders had hoped to bring to their new homes. Pianos can also represent the range of human emotions: joy, sorrow, hope, and more, with a variety of dynamics, tempos, pitches, and intensities. The pianos also served as storage areas and beds, and they survived for years in the frigid waters of the Arctic. Shaw is great at combining historical events, such as the Homestead Act, with creative situations, like transporting pianos as they blaze paths across arctic lands. Her story covers multiple generations of families who have hopes and aspirations for a better life while navigating changing landscapes, past, present, and future.

Besides the prominent storylines, which include the perspectives of the early settlers, Shaw masterfully invites the reader to examine human nature and the motivations behind the basic hunter-gatherer disposition, possibly the very fabric of humanity. There is a line in the book that supposes that Old Testament scribes were perhaps the earliest homesteaders. One storyline focuses more on the first settlers and their primal search for the promised land. The reader can sympathize with the pain of a boy named Moose as he trudges along, trying to meet the expectations of the men on the journey, as they face increasingly treacherous terrain. There are plenty of religious allusions, and a significant element of the narrative centers on a family building a church, preaching, and then welcoming back a prodigal brother. And of course, the contemporary family and its descendants are choosing to hunt abalone, kelp, and octopuses for nourishment.

Shaw employs much symbolism in the names she gives to the characters, the land, and, of course, the pianos. Two of the fortepianos (pianos made before 1830) were named Napoleon and Ahab—names after two extraordinarily ambitious characters, one real and one fictional, whose hubris leads to tragedy. There is a Mayflower family choir in the religious storyline, as well as the Resurrection Mountains and Jubilation House. The music metaphors are also sprinkled throughout the text. Music would elevate the land to a homeland worth having, and there was a melody of routine and a symphony of life. Of course, all of this aligns with the overarching message of climate change, rising tides, and rapid environmental change. The multiple generations of family members are painfully aware that the earth is changing before their eyes, and they react differently to the values of nature, family, and subsistence.
See my reviews at
https://quipsandquotes.net/2025/11/29...

[Cfabrication · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book kept confounding my expectations, pulling me deeper and deeper into the overlapping stories.

It opens with Milda, a 12-year-old girl who has hopes of leaving the Arctic for life on "the continent." Ah, I thought, I know what this book will be about: a coming of age story that is set against the sweep of the frozen North. Nope, or not exactly.

Well, perhaps it is the story of idealistic homesteaders who brave the elements to carve out lives against the backdrop of extraordinary grandeur, nope or not exactly.

What this is is a story of the intricate connectedness of relationships and how individual decisions and actions affect families both in the generation we are born into and in the generations to come.

The setting is the Arctic – not quite the Alaska of our time and our world, but a distillation of the north. The level of detail, made up of the piling up of day-to-day life, builds the world of each character, whether that world is in the past or the future. It is the daily routines and rituals that make the setting eternal, even as rising waters will change it forever.

Just as the setting is not quite our world, time shifts back-and-forth, internally defined, without any external context. “Four years after they found the letter” or "200 years after the great flood" (neither of these are quotes, just examples), without reference to the outside world. The people shift and change, the physical world shifts and changes, what is constant is the connections between people, between their stories, between their memories and between their loss.

The narrative tone is dispassionate. Terrible things happen, but there’s an undercurrent of moving onto the next thing. The language is descriptive, not florid. I found that appropriate to the overall story as without that stoicism, the difficulties of daily survival would be devastating. There are two first person POVs that bracket the story. The rest of the narration is close third person omniscient, not narration by a named character.

The characters' names reinforce the sense that this is like our world, but is not quite our world: Hullulla, Unamelia, Milda are unusual, if not invented by the author. The last names are as well: Huntmoon, Bloomer, Mayflower.

I did find it odd that daily tides were not discussed. I live near a northern coast with large tides. The constant movement of water is the background to life. The water is always changing level. I did find it odd that in this book, which is so constrained by water, 'tide' and 'tides' refer not to the twice daily highs and lows with which I’m familiar, but storm tides or rising water overall only. There’s a background thrum to tidal motion that I didn’t feel while reading this book. Instead, there’s the rising water that threatens life in the fjords, there’s the open water of the ocean and there’s the rushing water of storm-driven rivers, but there is not the sense of things revealed by a 20 or 30 foot daily tide

Overall extremely well done, immersive, and full of the mysteries of daily life. I particularly liked how things that had importance in the past were found in the future, stripped of their previous context, but given new importance by the finder. I was a little disappointed that while Moose's "homesteader journals" are mentioned, there’s no mention of what they are like, of what information they contain. But, in a world where the links between past generations and present are mute relics, perhaps that's just another mystery.

Thank you to NetGalley, which provided an ARC of this book.

[Tami (wondering... How did I get here?) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos was a book I was hugely curious about based on the title and premise alone. I love a debut novel and this one was ten years in the making. Its filled with incredible depth of the world-building.

The story takes place in a strange Arctic world where glaciers melt and sea levels rise. Families like Viola and Fry battle the elements, living in houses on stilts with pet sea lions, yet yearning for modern conveniences like sanitation and dental work. The plot is fascinating: homesteaders must haul 600-lb pianos into the wilderness to secure acreage. These instruments become "white whales," preserved in watery graves and highly valuable to collectors.

I found the book incredibly immersive, particularly the "piling up" of daily rituals that make the setting feel eternal. I loved the quirky touch of finding ivory keys in the bellies of trout and seeing how objects from the past are given new importance in the future. However, while there is some humor, there is also a great deal of grief and sudden death. While the persistence of humans in inhospitable places is a wonder.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the opportunity to read and enjoy this book. It is a hauntingly beautiful testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

[the_tbr_cart Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected The Pillager's Guide to Arctic Pianos by Kendra Langford Shaw to be a wonderfully quirky read, and it definitely didn't let me down in that department! It just turned out to be a bit too quirky for my personal reading tastes.

A lot of the story centers around a frontier-living style, which just isn't usually my thing. But even though the setting wasn't my favorite, I have to give credit where it's due: the characters were really well-developed and the plot was nice and consistent. It's very easy to see the author's talent shining through the writing.

I was easily able to finish it, and even though it wasn't a personal favorite, I know there is an audience out there that is going to absolutely love this unique story. I’m definitely curious to see what the author does next—I'd love to see her keep all that great originality, just maybe in a different setting next time!
Huge thanks to the author Kendra Langford Shaw, publisher Pantheon, and NetGalley for the advanced gifted copy of the book! All opinions are my own.

[Amanda Alviz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not my usual genre, but I ended up really enjoying this book. The setting and the vivid details woven throughout the story were what stood out the most to me. The Arctic landscape felt immersive and atmospheric, almost becoming its own character. The descriptions of the fjords, melting glaciers, off-grid living, and harsh beauty of the environment were incredibly well done and gave the story such a unique feel.

One of my favorite aspects was how imaginative and original the premise was. The idea of centuries-old pianos preserved beneath Arctic waters and the sudden “piano hunting” boom was unlike anything I’ve read before. It managed to feel quirky, whimsical, and thoughtful all at the same time. I also appreciated how the story explored themes of family, survival, home, climate change, and generational resilience without losing its sense of warmth and humor.

The Spahr family was eccentric in the best way, and even when the story became chaotic, there was still an underlying sense of heart and hopefulness that kept me invested. While some parts were a little outside my normal reading preferences, the creativity of the world and the rich storytelling made this a memorable read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Pantheon for a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[NurseKelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A family in the rural Arctic on a fjord only accessible by kayak & float plane. They make their money by selling pickled octopus & various sea life they find in the sea. However, climate change is also changing their home & their livelihood due to rising seas. They don’t know how long their way of life can continue.

Then a piano is found deep in the frigid Arctic Sea, perfectly preserved, and a new industry booms - the hunting, finding & selling of the abandoned pianos.

The story follows multiple generations of the family, from the early homesteaders to the modern day climate change experiencing Spahrs. The story is poetic at times, beautifully written with such reverence for the ocean & their way of life, while being utterly odd at many others. I couldn’t have guessed the how & why of this story & yet somehow it works. If you’re looking for a fanciful and heartfelt story of survival & fortitude, you’ll love this one.

[Lisa readandrepeet · Rating 3 out of 5]

The setting and premise 🅳🅰🆉🆉🅻🅴, but for me when that novelty wore off there wasn’t enough plot or character depth left to sign the check.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos. Absolutely loved the concepts here, wasn’t fully connected to any of our characters. I think maybe the overall scope of the interconnected generations and the setting itself were meant to be more impactful than the individual characters.. but I can only speak to what I found lacking in my own personal experience.

https://www.blue-house-books.com/item...

[Victoria Morrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really struggled with this piece. The story felt very choppy, The setting was intriguing for sure, but man I really wanted to connect with the characters and couldn't for whatever reason, I'm hoping to reread it another day and try again to see if it was just the season I'm in.

[Julie Hedlund · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. This book had a lot going for it, most of the setting and the descriptions of life in the Arctic territories. But it was bogged down by too many characters who, despite having intersecting storylines, were never given enough space to make me care about them, with the exception of Moose. It was more depressing than I expected given the whimsical title.

It was also overwritten in places - like it was trying too hard to be dazzling. But I liked it, and would recommend it to anyone interested in Arctic stories, climate fiction, and/or historical fiction.

[Jessie Ary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the imagery, but too disjointed for me. at times hard to know where / when I was with returning characters, and I think overall there were too many characters. I didn’t get a chance to connect with any of them

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Past Has Teeth, Ivory Keys, and a Terrible Sense of Timing
Kendra Langford Shaw’s “The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos” turns drowned instruments, rising water, and family myth into a salt-stung elegy for what cannot be hauled back to shore.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | May 10th, 2026


Jubilation House hovers above still Arctic water while the ghost of the Bloomer Napoleon rests below – a quiet image of home suspended over inheritance, grief, and the past that refuses to disappear.

A sunken piano is a beautiful joke until someone tries to raise it.

In Kendra Langford Shaw’s “The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos,” drowned homesteader pianofortes, held intact for generations in Arctic water, become cold-burning fuel for a boom: part antiques trade, part family hunger, part graveyard priced by provenance. The premise is marvelously unlikely; summary has a way of drying the seaweed out of it. Old instruments under ice, eccentric households in the fjords, museums arriving with white gloves and appetite – Shaw gives the joke ballast.

Her pianos are treasure, settler relic, museum bait, and the fantasy of a winter finally paid for. They are also coffins in waiting, preserved until devotion and desperation call them rescue.

For the Spahrs of Jubilation House, that devoted, desperate person is Finley. He grows up in a salmon-colored shack on stilts in the Wild Beard Fjords, where survival depends on charter flights, sea crops, preserved octopus, scavenged parts, stitched-together competence, and repairs made before winter starts charging interest. His sister Milda, the novel’s first major voice, reads the household with love sharpened by resentment. She knows what the place means. She also knows what it costs. Their mother Viola flies, farms, improvises; their father Fry steadies what he can; Temperance, the youngest, learns the household weather before she can name it.

Then the maps start lying. Glaciers melt. Old routes drown. Land keeps being reassigned to water. Jubilation House, beloved as it is, loses small arguments with the tide.

Finley first glimpses the Bloomer Napoleon underwater as a child and nearly drowns trying to wrestle it from the sea. The Napoleon is the family’s heirloom beast, hauled north by homesteaders in an absurd project to prove that civilization could be transported by sled, muscle, and parlor furniture.

From that near-death, the instrument becomes Finley’s private logic of rescue. If he can find it, perhaps the family can repair the house, pay its debts, prove Viola right for staying, and make the old story pay what it owes. Soon other pianos surface too – the Ahab Grand, the Bluefin, the Psalmist – and the territory builds a market from the cold’s talent for delaying decay. Tourists arrive. Museums scent provenance. Locals hunt. The fjords become a boomtown under ice.


The homesteaders haul parlor culture into Arctic wilderness, making the piano a burden before it ever becomes treasure.

The premise could easily have been reduced to quirk. Shaw refuses. Yes, the novel has octopus herds, named sea lions, chapel stones moved uphill, ivory teeth, jellyfish-lit ice, and a family plane called the ChickenCrusher 3000, a name that sounds as if it flew straight out of a child’s dare and somehow passed inspection. But the eccentricity is not a salted curio cabinet. Its oddities earn their keep. The octopuses are livelihood. The pianos are capital, curse, and corpse. The house is a machine that must be fed. Even delight is expected to pull its weight.

Shaw understands maintenance.

Home here is not a mood. Home is plumbing, ballast, generators, wetsuits, maps, drying racks, food stores, rotting wood, rising water, and someone remembering which animal has been fed. The lyricism keeps its hands dirty. Its tenderness is full of caulk, kelp, tea, oil, stitches, bruises, and unpaid bills. Jubilation House is not beloved because it is quaint. It is beloved because generations have kept it barely possible.


Jubilation House appears not as quaint refuge but as a working organism of stilts, ropes, drying racks, patched boards, and daily care.

The harder pressure in “The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos” is the confusion between recovery and rescue. Viola wants to stay because Jubilation House is home, and because leaving can look, from inside a family story built into the stilts, like betrayal. Milda wants the continent, education, libraries, and a life not bounded by the fjord’s weather. Fry sees the waterline rising and the children’s future narrowing. Finley inherits Viola’s will and turns it into a calling with symptoms. To him the Napoleon is not a relic. It is a repair fund, a proof, a receipt the sea refuses to release.

If he can raise it, perhaps the house will forgive them all.


Finley reaches toward the drowned Napoleon as if recovery might become rescue, while the water quietly knows the difference.

Shaw shows that Finley’s fever was inherited, not invented. The novel braids the Spahr descendants with the original homesteading expedition, especially through Moose Bloomer, the boy whose family first hauled the Napoleon north. Moose lowers the temperature under the comedy. In his sections, the pianos are not yet treasure. They are burdens wearing culture’s Sunday clothes, symbols of refinement dragged through mud, forest, river, hunger, and pain. The settlers’ dream is comic at first because the image is comic: families hauling massive pianofortes through Arctic wilderness to prove that manners have arrived. Then the comedy darkens. The instruments are too heavy, too fragile, too loaded with meaning to move. They do not dignify the expedition. They expose it.

The structure does not announce its cleverness; it waits until the reader realizes Finley has been reenacting an older disaster. Without Moose, his obsession might read as private mania. With Moose, it becomes an inherited load, preserved like the pianos themselves in cold water. The past is not behind the present; it is under it, intact, waiting to be mistaken for fortune.

Umi’s late entrance changes the book from a hunt for what was lost into a lesson in what must be tended. Finley and Hullulla’s daughter inherits neither the original dream nor the simple right to reject it. She inherits the work of living above what others drowned trying to recover.

Shaw’s prose hoards beautifully. She writes as if every object deserves a passport, a scar, and a secret market value. Her sentences stockpile the world: sea crops, piano hammers, wetsuits, maps, chapel glass, octopus rosettes, old machines, salvaged teeth. The risk is built into the abundance. A sentence can begin to feel like a pantry shelf that no one has had the heart to edit. But the surplus is also the point. In a salvage culture, nothing is safely minor. A cracked kayak, a child’s scar, a piano key, a stained-glass shard from a trout’s belly – each may be evidence, currency, warning, bequest.

Her strongest tonal trick is letting laughter and grief share oxygen. A child can nearly drown while hugging an antique piano. A family can name its plane the ChickenCrusher 3000 and still be one missed charter away from panic. A sea lion can be funny until it becomes another body pressed into the household economy. A piano can be ridiculous until someone dies inside the fantasy of lifting it. The grief runs deeper than the marvels admit.

There are useful shelf-neighbors. Karen Russell’s “Swamplandia!” comes to mind for household strangeness under grief’s pressure; Eowyn Ivey’s “The Snow Child” for northern longing and weathered myth. Shaw is wetter, busier, more barnacled than either. Her novel is not a fable polished smooth by frost. It is an epic of damp upkeep, salt-stung and ledger-weighted, with a taste for the practical grotesque.

The weakness is relic fever: Shaw sometimes reaches for one more found thing after the scene has already found its shape. A room, a fjord, a paragraph can become crowded with regional invention. One more named artifact, one more local custom, one more item from the territorial cabinet of curiosities arrives just after the emotional point has landed. The pacing is tidal rather than propulsive. It advances, swells, eddies, deposits several glittering objects at your feet, and then asks you to remember which one contained the knife. For some readers, that will be part of the pleasure. For others, it may feel like being lovingly trapped in an antique shop during a flood.

Still, the overgrowth is part of the reach, not a mistake beside it. Shaw is writing about accumulation: what families keep, reuse, sell, misread, mourn, pickle, stitch, drag forward, and cannot bear to throw away. A neater version of this novel would likely be less exasperating and less alive. Its excess is not decorative trimming. It is the novel’s weather. If it sometimes shades the windows, it also lets the house breathe.

The grief-work is stronger than the carnival of objects first suggests. Viola’s illness and death are not used as a sentimental lever; they register as a failure in the household circuit. Once she is gone, tasks redistribute. Someone must feed the herd, fly the plane, mend the house, mind Temperance, keep Fry from disappearing into grief, and decide whether love of place has become a form of self-harm. Temperance’s scarred bond with the octopus herd, Milda’s competence and resentment, Fry’s exhaustion, Finley’s tightening fixation – these are the book’s real machinery.

Hullulla Huntmoon brings another register: faith with mud on its boots. Preacher, river worker, daughter of a community trying to move its chapel to higher ground, Hullulla understands pursuit as a spiritual condition. Her romance with Finley matters because each recognizes in the other someone hunting for what may not be visible to anyone else. Their connection gives Finley’s obsession warmth without excusing it. It also prepares the novel for its most devastating conversion of metaphor into fact.

Finley finds the Napoleon at last. Wedged in coral, intact enough to seem like proof, it appears to have been waiting for him all along. He tries to raise it alone. The Kraken sinks. The escape hatch fails. The piano is too heavy. The scene is stark because it does not need much adornment: a boy grown into a man, a family dream made literal, an heirloom with the mass of a verdict. Finley dies because he believes too completely in the story handed to him. The lost thing, recovered, will not reverse the losses around it. It will only add him to them.

At the end, Shaw’s wager pays off. The Napoleon surfaces, but not as prize. Beneath the ice, near Finley’s trapped remains, it becomes a landmark, a grave, a communal memory site. The forte is not cashed in. It is not restored to drawing-room splendor. It is left below, where the living can gather above it. The Festival of Old Souls changes the grammar of the book. Salvage gives way to tending. Not everything precious should be hauled back into use. Some things are honored by being named, visited, and left in the cold dark.


Flowers rest on pale ice above what remains below, turning the book’s final movement from salvage into tending.

That final turn clarifies what “The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos” has been arguing with all along: possession. The homesteaders want land. Piano hunters want relics. Museums want provenance. Families want proof that their sacrifices meant something. Umi receives no deed that settles the matter. She receives a place, a dead father, two family lines, a house moved uphill, and a story too heavy to lift in one piece. What she receives is not ownership. It is tending.

Rising water arrives as an invoice: higher tides, failed routes, postponed repairs, a house finally hauled uphill. Shaw understands environmental strain not as spectacle alone, but as maintenance, debt, relocation, denial, and dinner. The book is most persuasive when it lets water work on ordinary time. Someone still has to make tea. Someone still has to sell the octopus. Someone still has to decide whether saving a house means keeping it where it was or carrying it, plank by plank, toward a future that will not resemble the past it claims to honor.

Shaw makes the fanciful premise keep the household books. The pianos never remain clever. They change function as the book deepens: cargo, burden, treasure, commodity, obsession, coffin, landmark. The book’s originality is not simply that Shaw imagines Arctic piano hunters. It is that she understands why such a hunt would matter to people who are broke, grieving, proud, funny, stubborn, and terrified of becoming unmoored from the story that made them.

My final rating is 91/100, which corresponds to 5/5 Goodreads stars. That marks it as a low five rather than a flawless one: not always disciplined, occasionally crowded, but singular enough, risk-taking enough, and emotionally exact enough to cross the line. Its finest pages have the charged oddity of folklore and the ledger-weight of a household that has to survive the morning. It knows that a family can be a myth, a business, a wound, a weather system, and a repair project, often before breakfast.

What lingers is not only the drowned piano. It is the house on stilts, the octopus tanks, the child pulled from the surf, the plane lifting out of the fjord, the chapel carried uphill, the ivory teeth, the maps, the cold, the terrible faith that old things can save us if only we can get a rope around them. Then comes the reversal, quiet as ice underfoot: the rope falls away, the flowers remain, and the living look down at a past finally allowed to stay where it is – visible, unreachable, still shining.


Early thumbnail studies test the review image’s central architecture – house above, piano below, and enough water between them for the whole novel’s silence to gather.


The cover-palette swatches establish the series’ visual grammar – blush, ochre, slate, olive, plum, rust, cream, and dark green held together before the fjord takes shape.


The pencil underdrawing reveals the image before atmosphere arrives – stilts, roofline, waterline, border, and the first faint placement of the submerged piano.


The border study experiments with piano-key rhythms, water ripples, stilt marks, and shoreline echoes, turning the frame into a quiet extension of the book’s symbols.


The first wash begins to give the drawing weather – pale sky, lavender water, blush house, olive distance, and the earliest hint of buried history beneath the surface.


This study tests how little of the Napoleon can be shown while still being felt, keeping the piano suspended between object, memory, grave, and lure.


The scale study considers the human body only to remove it, proving that the final image needs no figure because the house itself carries the absence.

All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.
Watercolors are done on 140lb vellum, and then scanned into the computer using an Epson scanner. From there, they are finalized in Procreate. All art and opinions are my own.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Pillagers' Guide to Arctic Pianos is a family saga full of unique ideas and distinct characters. It was intriguing, quirky, and had some surprising poignance.

Thanks to Kendra Langford Shaw and Pantheon for the gifted book. All opinions expressed are my own.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. Different setting and premise. But after 98 pages, I’m a DNF. I have zero idea what I just read.

[susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an advance copy of this book at the Penguin Random House booth at Emerald City Comic Con. Thanks to PRH for being there and to ECCC for having them.

I really had no idea exactly what to expect from this one. The description and title evoke a sort of cozy whimsy which isn't always my thing (sometimes whimsy is a bit too... whimsical and overdone). I had visions of the pianos being living things that actually attacked people. In reality, the book was much more than that and I ended up really enjoying it, although I also find it somewhat difficult to describe.

At its heart, this is the story of a few different generations of a single family living in an alternate reality version of the Arctic (in this scenario, the Arctic Territory was opened to settlers in what seems to be the 1800s or so, and several dozen families came north from what is only called 'the continent' looking for a new start or opportunity; this whole thing is reminiscent of the Oregon Trail, or any sort of pioneer spirit sort of situation, although the author is able to strip it of its less savory 'sweeping out the natives' connotations by making it clear that the natives still own rights to most of the land and are just allowing a sort of easement along the trail to allow the settlers to come through to their new plots).

One of the requirements for the settlers coming north was to bring a piano with them. They were supposedly "bringing civilized society" north, and whatever group was luring them up there with promises of opportunity and prosperity apparently equated "music" with "civilized society" and thought pianos (probably the least practical instrument to transport long distance over a trail???) were the best symbol of this.

Eventually a lot of these pianos went missing or were abandoned and as the pillaging and hunting of the title and description refers to the people 200 years later searching out these pianos so they can be sold to museum as archaeological/historical artifacts.

If I was going to define this book with a quote it would be "Milda couldn't help but think that if there were an instrument more delicately strung than the human family she had yet to encounter it. Webbed together by a complicated series of levers sand spools, they were each constantly exerting and releasing tension. Forever torquing against one another in both miserable and nonmiserable ways.". It's about what you do for your family, how you relate to your family, how your family shapes you and the ways in which you try to get closer or further away from your family. So it's family literary fiction with a quirky hook.

The story is told from multiple points of view, all of them associated with the Spahr family in some way. They tell the story of their lives in the present (which at first I thought was also in the past, but turns out to be in some version of the actual present, our present), hunting down pianos to try to support their household and supplement income (their lifestyle of subsistence farming is always on a razor's edge). The present day Spahrs are descended from one of the original families who came to the territory as settlers, and they live on a house suspended on pontoons in the middle of a fjord, where they farm octopuses.

Eventually the story expands to tell the story of the Spahr's ancestor Moose Bloomer, who came to the territory as a 12 year old. Also part of the story are the Huntmoon family, who run the territory church.

First off, the characters are all well drawn and interesting, and it takes very little time to like them and start rooting for them (which is good, because my only real complaint is that I felt like I could've spent more time with them). They've carved out a life for themselves in a not terribly hospitable place, and they've learned to navigate and build families there. They're constantly contending with the very real and tangible effects of climate change (rising water levels which are always displacing them), and the challenges of keeping themselves afloat and their houses in one piece.

Second, the writing is very good, and the way the various POVs are wound together works well.

Third, I liked the way that the world was built off the basics of ours, but with things added on (and a refreshing absolute acceptance of the fact that climate change actually exists, which is hard to deny when it's right in your face the way it would be if you tried to live in the Arctic).

The main thing that I wanted was more, especially with the Spahr sisters, Milda and Temperance. We get their POVs early on, setting up the world and telling their part of the story, but we don't really get anything about them, except peripheral mentions from other characters for the rest of the book, and what we do get only makes me want to know more. Temperance especially, I could've used several more chapters about.

(She is the youngest sibling, the one who always felt like she was sort of not a part of her older brother and sisters' tight unit. She later ends up having a sort of entirely different sort of childhood than them, and also ends up being our LGBTQ rep, and we don't really get to know any of those specifics. I would've loved some more information about her life away from her siblings, and her love life... we get at least some detail about her siblings' love life, why not hers??? Anyway... I suppose if the only complaint I can really come up with is "more please" it's not so bad.)

The book doesn't shy away from death or bad things happening. In the end it's about all the things that sort of brought the family to where they are, good and bad.

This is the sort of book that makes me appreciate getting all these advance copies at ECCC. It's a book I might not pick up on my own, but that is well written, has an interesting premise and good characters. If you like a well-written generational literary story (and a settler story without the "ick" of either colonialism or missionary work on it; the preachers spread the word but don't force anyone to listen to it), this is the one for you.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a copy of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. These thoughts are entirely my own and not a reflection of the exchange.

There is a lot to like here in this upcoming novel. I especially loved the first quarter or so of the book when we meet the Spahr family who are living--or really just getting by--literally on the water in a stilted house in the Arctic. Not surprisingly life is hard, especially as climate change means the permafrost is melting and the water is rising.

Shaw's description is never over the top, yet I can so clearly see Jubilation House. I feel like I could make my way around the house, the veranda, the attic, and the aquatic farm without any assistance because I have such a clear picture of the house in my mind. I loved meeting Milda, Temperance, Finley, and Viola, although I don't have as good of a picture of Fry.

Let's talk about names. The story is built on the idea that the Arctic was a settlement destination much in the same way the West was. We follow the Bloomer family as they head way north to homestead a "civilized" society. On the trail we meet the families who would populate this area. In addition to the Bloomers, we have the Happenstance family, the Mayflowers, the Huntmoons, the Starrs, the Popes, Helixes, etc. Then there are the first names Moose (who we much later find out is actually Moses), Unamelia, Milda, Fry, Hullulla, Maple (known as Mapes), Umi, etc. I don't know if the names are supposed to elicit ideas about the individuals and families or just not be especially tied to any other regions. They often sound Native American but these were very specifically not native peoples, but immigrants into the area.

Timeframes. I think the journey north takes place somewhere in the 1800s. They travel via dog sled, which makes sense for the snow, but a huge chunk of their journey is on dirt, which didn't make a lot of sense to me. Huskies towing sleds in the dirt is doable, but not terribly efficient. The modern timeline is never identified. I'd guess it's present-ish, maybe starting in the 90s? It's sort of irrelevant. They are so far north, they don't have a lot of interaction with the rest of the world, so there's no internet or TV. At the end of the novel, they mention solar cars so it's sometime in the future.

So much of this story is realistic. Everything seems possible, even as it's outlandish. That's especially true for the pianos, or as they call them pianofortes or fortes. When the families traveled north to establish a "civilized" society, they were sold on the idea that there was no more civilizing element than music, so literally every family carried with them a piano. While I know early settlers did do this sometimes, it certainly wasn't every family, and they weren't even trying to travel via dog sled! So it's out there, yet fully accepted in this world. Each piano is a different style and type, each with a name brand, like Napoleon or Bluefin. The lore is that the pianos were abandoned along the way (you learn how as Moose's story unfolds).

I love the world that Shaw has created, and yet after getting to know the Spahrs, we entered the "messy middle." The middle of the story rambled far too much for me. I didn't know where we were going. We see Finley and Milda searching for pianos (which have now become a hot collectible when restored), but I still was not sure what we were building to. More characters are added and we meander to a different part of the settlement. The water is rising. People are leaving. Life is getting harder.

The novel redeems itself in the last chapter, which I also loved. It brings the story to a close and ties a lot of it together. It's touching and beautiful.

Ultimately this is a multi-generational family story, really a character study of that family. I do prefer a little more forward motion to my reading, but I did appreciate the story and would definitely continue to watch Kendra Langford Shaw. She's clearly inventive and has created something wonderfully original here.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This seems to be one of the more unusual novels I’ve read in recent years. It is a work that combines environmental fiction, family saga, speculative history, and absurdist humor into a narrative that is often imaginative and occasionally perplexing.

The novel is set in an invented Arctic region where nineteenth-century settlers are lured by the promise of free land in exchange for helping to "civilize" a remote frontier. As part of this bizarre scheme, each family is required to transport a full-sized piano into the wilderness. The premise demands a considerable suspension of disbelief. The image of settlers hauling pianos across rugged terrain—often by dog sled despite an apparent lack of snow—strikes a surreal note, and many readers may struggle to accept the logistics of the undertaking. Yet this improbable conceit becomes the foundation upon which the entire novel rests.

The story follows the descendants of those settlers generations later as environmental collapse steadily inundates their coastal homeland. Living among fjords accessible primarily by boat or float plane, they struggle to maintain their communities while rising waters threaten villages and traditional ways of life. Their increasingly precarious existence leads them to an unexpected source of income: locating, recovering, and restoring the pianos abandoned by their ancestors. What begins as an eccentric historical curiosity gradually becomes both a livelihood and a means of preserving cultural memory.

Shaw structures the novel around the daily challenges of survival in this changing landscape, interweaving episodes from the settlers' original journey into the wilderness. These historical passages provide valuable context for understanding the descendants' fierce attachment to their homeland and their determination to endure despite mounting adversity. The chronology remains vague. The settlers' story clearly evokes the nineteenth century, while the descendants appear to inhabit a future world where advanced technologies coexist with a largely subsistence-based existence. This ambiguity contributes to the novel's dreamlike atmosphere, though it can also leave readers uncertain about the larger contours of Shaw's imagined world.

The book's greatest strengths lie in its setting and characters. Shaw creates a memorable environment that is simultaneously beautiful, isolated, and endangered. Her cast of descendants is equally distinctive. While some readers may find both the setting and the circumstances implausible, others will appreciate the novel's willingness to embrace imagination over realism. Shaw writes about her characters with warmth, understanding, and a gentle sense of humor that helps ground even the story's strangest moments.

Thematically, the novel is direct in its concerns. Family bonds, resilience, and adaptation in the face of environmental catastrophe dominate the narrative. Most intriguing is Shaw's use of the piano as a symbol of culture transplanted into an inhospitable wilderness. The abandoned instruments become monuments to a particular vision of civilization, one that may be ill-suited to the realities of the landscape. By contrast, the qualities that allow the descendants to survive—ingenuity, cooperation, and loving care for one another—prove far more valuable than the more conventional cultural markers their ancestors carried with them.

“The Pillagers' Guide to Arctic Pianos” is not a novel that always succeeds on its own terms. Its central premise can feel strained, and aspects of its world-building raise more questions than they answer. Nevertheless, Shaw's originality, affection for her characters, and evocative depiction of a threatened environment make for an engaging and memorable reading experience. Readers willing to accept its eccentricities will find much to admire, even if the novel ultimately may fall short of fully realizing its ambitious vision.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Pillager’s Guide to Arctic Pianos is futuristic climate fiction that takes one wonky idea and builds out the rest of the story around it. The wonky idea is that people moving into the Arctic as land speculators must bring a piano or some other kind of forte with them as a means of cultural enrichment to be able to secure land rights. Then, generations later their descendants begin salvaging those pianos as their life gets more precarious with warming temperatures.

Pianos would of course be much easier to find sunk in the water than say a violin or a trumpet, and be made up of a lot more individual pieces that could be scavenged and sold separately. But when you consider how perilous the journey is that these people were making, that they would allocate that much of what they could bring and move to hauling a piano along when they could bring a violin or trumpet instead seems a bit ridiculous. If it was really about culture and necessities I would be inclined to say laminate sheet music and bring it along to sing from.

If you’re willing to suspend your disbelief about hauling pianos into the tundra, then Kendra Langford Shaw does a pretty good job of imagining a harsh environment subjected to climate change, where people mostly have to live off the land or sea to survive, and people can and do fall victim to nature and illness, without the safety and medical resources we’re all pretty familiar with.

The book goes back and forth between a twelve year old Moose making the homestead journey with his expectant mother and stepfather, and the troubles they face on their way to claim land, and his descendants and those of fellow homesteading families who have survived and have their own descendants in the area. This mainly consists of his four times great grandchildren Milda, Finley and Temperance and fellow homesteading descendants Hullulla , Ezra, and Maple.

Langford Shaw does a good job of of making the reader aware of not just how remote the territory is in the Arctic from the continent, but how far away the families in the territory were from each other. This does create a problem though, in that it not only limits the characters, but limits their interactions with more than just two to four other people. When new characters are introduced it feels abrupt instead of a natural transition to someone you’ve already been introduced to from a different POV.

The book is being compared in its quirkiness to Karen Russell’s Swamplandia. I haven’t read this, but I did read Russell’s latest, The Antidote, last summer and it is also a book that takes a climate crisis (the Dust Bowl) and introduces a few quirky elements. But I think Russell captured something that I don’t really see in this book as much, and that is why the characters are compelled to do what they do, and what keeps them there when life might be better somewhere else. Here, you know they stay generation after generation, but beyond the cost of the continent you don’t really learn why the characters stay. And considering the harsh conditions, the worsening climate change and the struggle to survive they have to be compelled by something.

I think the story idea is interesting, but I also think the characters needed more development to make me understand why they stay somewhere that takes a special kind of life and love to commit to.

A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.