The Indifferent Stars Above invites you to imagine that you’re trapped. The snow is falling down and you’re stuck in the mountains with dwindling food, limited supplies, and no modern conveniences. The only way for you to call for help is to climb a mountain and hope you find help on the other side. Or you could stay where you are, camp, and hope that the snow melts before you starve.

Either way, there’s a high chance you and your family will die. So… what do you do?

This really puts the whole Oregon Trail game into a different light, doesn’t it?

So, I’m a little obsessed with Little House on the Prairie. Ever since I read the first book decades ago, I’ve been searching for a specific kind of nonfiction that reads like fiction. The entire reason I picked up Heida in the first place was to chase that high. I want large outdoor spaces, working both with and against the elements, and that ever-present sense of awe. Heida: A Shepherd at the Edge of the World mostly delivers on that promise.

On the surface, it looks like it checks all the boxes. Heida Ásgeirsdottír is a sheep farmer, model, green activist, and now a best-selling author. She has that same, straight-forward down to earth feeling that Laura Ingalls Wilders’ journals do. More than that, Heida is a poet. She was a police officer and she served as an ultrasound technician for the community’s sheep.

Basically, she’s lived through enough for three lives, but that didn’t stop the memoir from falling flat.