Fair disclosure: I've been one of the beta readers of all of Priscilla Bird's books, as they were written and posted, chapter by chapter, at howtomeowinyiddish.blogspot.com. So it's not occurred to me to post reviews of them. So I searched for the Amazon page to recommend one of them to someone I know in real life. The Amazon page to buy The Forest Is Forever is messed up; the book was written in the US, for US readers, about a place in the US, but searches show only the pages to buy the British or Australian editions. Say what? When Americans want to publish things that may mention or allude to people who may not like what we say about them, e.g. novels in which characters have parents or spouses who are Bad Examples but we're not positive that we've made those parents or spouses different enough from our own, we have traditionally told our agents "Just publish it in England.' Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. But The Forest Is Forever is available in the US. You just have to search for the author, not the title. You can buy it at
--but oh well search engines are saying Amazon's server is down, intermittently, today anyway. If you search for "books priscilla bird" they show you books by other people called Priscilla and books about birds. And if you search Google for "priscilla bird book forest is forever," the algorithm, no doubt attracted by our using the same half of a screen name, will--as of this morning--put a Link Log in which I showed the terribly cute "The late Albert Einstein recommends PBird's books" graphic designed by e-friend LoneStar Neanderthal, in between links to buy the book in England and to buy it in Australia.
Well. If they're going to do that, and maybe Google has more respect for this blog now that our daily page views are growing, then I ought at least to post a full-sized review of The Forest Is Forever.
Title: The Forest Is Forever
Author: Priscilla Ann Bird
Date: 2026
Publisher: Amazon
Length: 486 pages
ISBN: 979-8248948628
This is the third volume of stories about a magical place in the Baker National Forest in Washington state. Humans, even the fictional ones in the book, can find the settlement where the wolves, pumas, ravens, Neanderthal Men, and only a few other Sasquatch (they spread out), and other living things recognize Ralph the Sasquatch as their king--but only if the Sasquatch let them. Harmless but alarming pranks deflect unwelcome humans. A few select humans like reporter Millie, Ranger Rick, and restless student Marge, become friends and, whether by keeping the settlement secret or writing about it in such a way that hardly anyone believes their stories, are allowed to visit the Sasquatch family often.
Sasquatch believers are divided on the question whether Sasquatch are more like giant humans or more like giant gorillas. They agree that the creatures, if they still exist, would be a separate species but don't agree on which genus that species would belong in. In these stories the Sasquatch are clearly more like humans.
Sasquatch believers also disagree about whether Sasquatch bodies have never been found because the creatures intentionally destroy bodies that might lead researchers to their dwelling places, or have the ability to disappear (and dispose of bodies) into alternate dimensions, or are demonic delusions that exist only to lead people astray. In these stories they have the ability to pop in and out of interdimensional portals, and other super-powers, and they are good though not perfect creatures. There are different tribes and clans of Sasquatch. Some, Ralph admits, may be hostile to humans. His clan are benign.
In fact, Ralph, his wife Ramona, and their son Twigg and daughter Cherry, are generally smarter and nicer than the average human. Stories about them often include solutions to human problems, though sometimes the Sasquatch family solve problems by using their super-powers.
In this book Twigg grows up, likes young females he knows he's not meant to marry, finds and marries his beshert, and moves out on his own.
There's nothing else quite like this series. The general concept reminds me of Kipling's children's stories, but the perspective and philosophy, the author's voice, and the characters themselves are altogether different from Kipling's. If you like whimsical, goodhearted, very gentle short fiction, you'll like the Ralph Stories, and you'll want to collect them all.
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