The Wandering Hill

The Berrybender Narratives #2

by Larry McMurtry

The second volume in Larry McMurtry's four-part historical epic featuring the Berrybender family as they continue their journey through the West during the 1830s.In The Wandering Hill, Larry McMurtry continues the story of Tasmin Berrybender and her eccentric family in the still unexplored Wild West of the 1830s. Their journey is one of exploration, beset by difficulties, tragedies, the desertion of trusted servants, and the increasing hardships of day-to-day survival in a land where nothing can be taken for granted. By now, Tasmin is married to the elusive young mountain man Jim Snow (the "Sin Killer"). On his part, Jim is about to discover that in taking the outspoken, tough-minded, stubbornly practical young aristocratic woman into his teepee he has bitten off more than he can chew. Still, theirs is a great love affair and dominates this volume of Larry McMurtry's The Berrybender Narratives, in which Tasmin gradually takes center stage as her father loses his strength and powers of concentration, and her family goes to pieces stranded in the hostile wilderness. The Wandering Hill (which refers to a powerful and threatening legend in local Indian folklore) is at once literature on a grand scale and riveting entertainment by a master storyteller.

Genres: Westerns, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Audiobook, Humor, Adventure, Historical

321 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Larry Jeff McMurtry was an American novelist, essayist, and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas. His novels included Horseman, Pass By (1962), The Last Picture Show (1966), and Terms of Endearment (1975), which were adapted into films. Films adapted from McMurtry's works earned 34 Oscar nominations (13 wins). He was also a prominent book collector and bookseller.
His 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove was adapted into a television miniseries that earned 18 Emmy Award nominations (seven wins). The subsequent three novels in his Lonesome Dove series were adapted as three more miniseries, earning eight more Emmy nominations. McMurtry and co-writer Diana Ossana adapted the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (2005), which earned eight Academy Award nominations with three wins, including McMurtry and Ossana for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2014, McMurtry received the National Humanities Medal.
In Tracy Daugherty's 2023 biography of McMurtry, the biographer quotes critic Dave Hickey as saying about McMurtry: "Larry is a writer, and it's kind of like being a critter. If you leave a cow alone, he'll eat grass. If you leave Larry alone, he'll write books. When he's in public, he may say hello and goodbye, but otherwise he is just resting, getting ready to go write."

Reviews

[aPriL does feral sometimes · Rating 3 out of 5]

'The Wandering Hill', book 2, has a much different tone than the first book, 'Sin Killer', in the Berrybender series. It reads more like straightforward western adventure romance, similar to 19th century American dime novels https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weste..., but modernized by contemporary scholarship. The author's intentional undertone of satire in the first Berrybender book is completely gone.

What remained of the Berrybender party journeyed across America from the Missouri to Yellowstone (gentle reader, we are not told of this trip). As the book opens, the Berrybender troupe are resting amongst new friends, primarily mountain men, at a Yellowstone River trading post. One of those new friends is Kit Carson! However, dear reader, in this more realistic rendering of Carson, he is more of a man than manly.

The intent of the mountain men is a trip to an annual meeting of fur sellers and buyers, particularly the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, but the word 'intent' feels almost like too strong of a word to use. The fur animals have almost been trapped out, so the yield is low. The men have been noticing also everywhere they travel they run into people. Besides other mountain men, the west is full (to their eyes) of peculiar European aristocrats, painters and proto-scientists. Indians are about as well, but they are becoming an anachronism already, shadows of their former selves.

The chapters alternate between viewpoints of the Berrybender party characters and various Indians, and through their observations we learn a bit about the social customs and historical adventures of 1833. The true main character, though, is Travel in the American West. While using humor is often how these hardy people handle the terrors and adversarial conditions of living together in the Wild, many of them are mourning how the territories are changing.

Mourning is not for the Berrybenders, however. The surviving family members are continuing to follow Lord Berrybender as he struggles through an alcoholic fog to remember the point of his vacation in the West - hunting and shooting everything that moves while camping out. Tasmin, spirited eldest daughter, is continuing to stir up trouble with her feisty ways. The fact she is pregnant barely registers - until, whether she, and especially her mountain man husband, Jim Snow, wants it or not, the baby is born!

This book is a fun informative entertainment, but I would recommend reading 'Sin Killer' first, although it is not entirely necessary. However, reading in order provides the backstory which does fill in a bit more information about the Berrybenders. Personally, I am finding the Berrybender characters very comic and two-dimensional, but The Dying Wild West Adventure is the real story.

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just to give you an idea of McMurtry, here is a brief summary of Chapter 33: A Blackfoot named Antelope gets stabbed with a lance that goes right through him. To everyone's amazement, he survives. In fact, he did not seem to be feeling too bad. He could not run as fast as he used to, a quality which had made him quite attractive to the Blackfeet women. Surprisingly, they seemed to find him even more attractive now. With the lance in him, Antelope had to sleep on his side. He found that uncomfortable. He did not want to pull out the lance because he thought it would allow his soul to escape through the hole. So he sawed off both ends and changed his name to Man with a Plug in His Belly. I love that!

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

2020 reread.

Here's my review of the whole series, from circa 2016: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

This one was pretty good the second time, but not compelling, so I set it aside at about 2/3 in. Now it's overdue, so.... It's probably closer to 3.5 stars, but then, I did give up. And I did like my reread of the first one, "Sin Killer" -- which would rate at about 4 stars, I'd say, and it's already fading fast, despite re-reading it sometime this summer. So I doubt I will reread more of these. Second-rank McMurtry is still good stuff, but perhaps not the second time? Not this one, anyway.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back to the Berrybenders. It was kind of nice to revisit this story, it had been about a year since I listened to the first in the series. This one was fun too- though I had some issues with it. There is always a little more dithering in the middle books of a series. I feel like there was more solid plot in book one (Sin Killer), and the plot outline for much of this second book seemed to be "the gang winters at a fort; various people have arguments." I got really tired of chapter after chapter of Tasmin and Jim arguing and then individually mulling over the wisdom of their relationship. And Pomp mulling over whether he was really an Indian or a European. A lot of mulling over. I think the reader can pick up on these sorts of interior struggles through action and dialogue...not that there isn't a place for interior monologue, but it feels a bit overused here.
However, I did like the way McMurtry combines real people with fictional people, and gives everyone a personality. I also like that he allows the Indian characters a rich interior life as well- he gives them the same grudges and joys and motivations as everyone else.
Of note- I, and my wife (amazingly, since she only listened to 2 of 9 discs with me), both guessed one of the climactic deaths way before it happened. We both said "I'll bet it's ______ that's going to get it." And it was. So perhaps a bit predictable. I'm going to keep going with the Berrybenders though...McMurtry accomplished the most important goal. He got me hooked into the story.

[James Clinton Slusher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't particularly care for the first book in this series and I'm not sure what stirred me to pick up this second. I think it's just that I like Lonesome Dove so much that I figured there must be something more to this series than the sort of haphazard slapstick of The Sin Killer. There is! This book was really engaging on so many levels. characters who were one-dimensional and uninspiring in the first book here become multi-faceted, engaging individuals, some of whom you kike, some who disgust you, some you admire and all who have the capacity to engage you. The situations are unpredictable and at times arresting, but they're always believable. The description is vivid and diverse and the writing is neatly layered. I could think of countless writing themes one could explore - his use of dialog, his balance of narration and exposition, his development of personal and family relationships, his knowledge of the historical subject matter and so many more. No, this is not Blood Meridian, the pinnacle of the genre for me, but it has a very raw, compelling, dust-and-blood feeling that is both enjoyable and thought-provoking. I've now started the third of the four books in the series and I'm quickly finding it as literary and engrossing as the second.

[Mikey B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The grandiose style is lost in this, the second volume of the Berrybender narratives – despite the quality, at times, of the dialogue and story-telling. It is too long and suffers from being too static with little of the sparkling characterizations of the first book. There is little descriptive traveling and many of the themes of volume I are repeated. I came to dread the passages of the strained relationship between the erudite Tasmin and her hapless, speechless husband. And enough of Lord Berrybender’s buffoonery! It all comes across as a Western soap opera. And having young grizzly bears frolicking with infants is a fairy tale – get real McMurtry!

Nevertheless, when we are spared the follies of the Berrybenders’ and their marital-sexual discords there is interesting reading and the short chapters at least save us from long intervals. And because I am in the midst of traveling, and do not have an e-reader (yes I am technologically, for books at least, still in the 20th century!) I must move onto volume III which is in my suitcase.

[Steve Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

We catch up with the Berrybender traveling disaster as they settle in for the winter in an outpost at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers. Being forced into close quarters gives a chance to get more into the personalities of the travelers as they boil together. Jim can't bear to be trapped with Tasmin and wanders off for several months. Lord B becomes an insufferable ass and is losing his mind. The white English witches and the appearance of a wandering conical hill with a single tree on top filled with devils further worry the Utes.

Like the outpost, this book felt claustrophobic and trapped you into uneasy proximity. As the spring progresses and people start to disperse, safety and security give way to the prairie dangers. Comedy and tragedy are close relations throughout the book.

Thanks to JoCoLibrary for keeping an actual hardcopy of this book available for free access!

[Matthew Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75, overall not quite as good as the first book, but still alternately funny and affecting. There is a less compelling plot in this one but the character work is still excellent and something about Larry's style just makes his books immensely readable without being too plain or sacrificing quality. On to Book 3

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore McMurty’s westerns, and having read and enjoyed “Sin Killer”, I promised myself to read more of the Berrybender series, and now, several years later, have read the second of the four books. As in Sin Killer, the humor runs deep, and so do the references to violent and gory acts on the western plains of 1833. The clan of English Lord Berrybender continues its time in the wild west, with daughter Tasmin the central figure and married to the Sin Killer, Jim Snow. She bears a child and faces his famous emotional outbursts with a very sharp tongue and English gentry outlook not familiar or comfortable to Jim. Also present are trappers Kit Carson and Jim Bridger, painter George Catlin, Charbonneau of Lewis and Clark fame and the son, Pomp, he ostensibly had with Sacajawea, and others who may or may not have really existed, including many Indians (Blue Thunder existed, but Greasy Lake or Little Onion? Who knows?). Then there’s the Wandering Hill of the title, a mythical moving hill that’s an omen of death to Indian cultures. There’s lots of action here, more than a smattering of humor, some quite bawdy, much on cultural and male/female relationships, and enough historical figures and what seems to be historically accurate detail to make this a lot of fun. Next, coming soon, book three, By Sorrow’s River.

[Mallory · Rating 3 out of 5]

Volume two of this series is just as bawdy and perhaps more violent than the first. However, there’s also a fascinating love story developing between Jim Snow and his new wife, Tasmin. Why has someone of her station become attached to this independent, seemingly untamable man? Likewise, what is it that draws him to her? It’s fun watching them try to fit in and adapt to each other’s worlds. Tasmin’s quick acceptance of his Indian wife was a surprise. The introduction of numerous other characters continues to expand upon the idea of a shrinking West.

Favorite quotes: “You will just have to get used to the inconveniences, Papa. You’ve strayed into a democracy – a great mistake from your point of view, I’m sure. The citizens around here are rather determined to do as they please.” – Tasmin Snow (nee Berrybender)

“Which was better: freedom with its risks, or the settled life with its comforts?”

[Mike Futcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Wandering Hill is a winsome successor to Sin Killer, Larry McMurtry's first book in the four-volume Berrybender Narratives, which follow a group of mountain men and a family of eccentric English aristocrats as they tool around the wild American West in the 1830s.

Like its predecessor, The Wandering Hill starts with affectations that are hard to adjust to. I wasn't overly fond of Sin Killer's overbearing vaudeville Western form, but found it tolerable enough, and The Wandering Hill is much the same way at first. McMurtry's eye for character and ear for dialogue keep our stamina up during those moments when we can feel like we've made a mistake in indulging in any more of this whimsical, affected Berrybender nonsense.

Happily, The Wandering Hill finds itself in its second half. Characters become more charming – young Ten, now known as Kate, is adorable – and things start to happen. It's still a disappointingly plotless story, like Sin Killer before it, but in this second half of The Wandering Hill there are at least skirmishes and stampedes and some touching, quiet character moments to entertain us. By this point, the Berrybender narrative has settled in, for all its faults, allowing McMurtry's pleasingly natural storytelling ability to blossom. As the novel progresses, it takes on a more comfortably McMurtry-like tone, and it ends as a quite capable Western adventure.

[Micah · Rating 4 out of 5]

These Berrybender novels are like an HBO series, following a mad band of English aristocrats, their diverse European servants, and a collection of feral trappers and trackers as they wander the wild American west, dropping like flies along the way. The story is shocking and darkly comic, filled with soap opera family drama and inconceivably bleak circumstances at every bend. At the center of the story stand the newly married couple Jim Snow and Tasmin Berrybender. Snow is known as The Sin Killer, an orphaned raised by natives and then an oppressive preacher, taught a strange sort of Christian morality that has turned him into a quiet warrior of universal renown. The only person more impressive is his loud, educated, tough talking new wife, a woman of abounding beauty who cows every man she meets by brute force.

Picking up within weeks of where The Sin Killer left off, The Wander Hill feels like an equal as a next episode in the lives of this meandering bunch of lordly, wilderness misfits.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eat the Rich!

I love this book and this series - it makes me laugh out loud, a lot. The premise is quite simple: pampas old rich guy from Imperial England comes over to the American frontier to shoot everything in sight, thinks he can order/re-order everyone and everything, including Mother Nature, according to his privileged whims and, in then end, gets what's coming to him. In the process he damn near destroys his family and everyone around him. While the rich get predicably eaten, literally and figuratively, by nature, the frontier and its inhabitants, it is the strong female characters who hold this story together and keep the book moving along with a sassy spirit. I can't wait to read what the Berrybender women will get up to in the next installment.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is Part 2 of the Berrybender Narrative. As the arrogance of the Berrybender entourage is much diminished by their misadventures in Book 1, we get a glimpse at the conditions for travel and survival in the American west just prior to the mass migration of people from the East. Interestingly McMurtry gives us not only the perspective of the mostly non-native Berrybender party but also provides a perspective from the various native tribe members that are directly involved with the English adventurers. I have always found stories from this time fascinating, will definitely read Part3.

[Richard Schaefer · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Wandering Hill, the second volume of the Berrybender Narratives, is named for a legendary hill that is said to appear in areas where death approaches. And boy is there plenty of death in this book, as in the American West in the era in which it was set. Without the (relative) safety of their steamship, the British aristocratic Berrybenders’ survival seems increasingly unlikely in this book. They have to weather brutal storms, unforgiving land, hostile Native Americans (rightly so), internal politics amongst their party, and, time after time, death. I found myself asking, as I believe McMurtry intended his readers to ask, why are the Berrybenders here at all? It’s ostensibly in pursuit of nothing more than bragging rights; Lord Berrybender simply wants to bag American game. While it’s hard to review these books individually (they’re really all one work and flow directly into each other), The Wandering Hill is even better than Sin Killer; the scope of the narrative widens impressively without losing the intimacy of character-based moments. While they’re different from anything else he wrote, the Berrybender Narratives are shaping up to be one of McMurtry’s major works.

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. The first was much better.

[Neal Reinhardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Number two of a four book series. I have enjoyed the storyline so I believe I will continue to see how the Berrybender trek into the deep plains ends.

[Rick Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little slow in places with big events fairly spread out.

[Betsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Narrator: Alfred Molina. Great narrator. I think this book suffers from Second in Series Syndrome. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters in Sin KillerSin Killerand laughed my way through. But in The Wandering HillThe Wandering HillI just found them tiresome. I couldn't figure out why Tasmin was with Jim Snow. I couldn't figure out why everyone just shrugged at Bobbety or Father Geoffrin, or who was Kate? What happened to Jim Snow's personality? And I couldn't figure out why Lord Benderberry did any of the things he did - his character seemed to have gone from farce to just plain silly.

Well, Second in Series Syndrome usually means the next one is better. I'll pick up By Sorrow's Riversometime later to see what becomes of them.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The tumultuous, bloody and almost heedless trek of the Berrybenders continues, albeit much of it spent stalled in a trapper's fort waiting for the spring. Tasmin and Sin Killer's married bliss is interrupted by a bout of domestic abuse. Lord Berrybender deteriorates mentally but remains utterly appalling. Babies are on the way: no less than three are born in the course of the novel. Pity the poor babies. Barely crawling and they are subjected to long treks across deserted wilderness, buffalo stampedes, Indian attacks and encounters with the odd cactus.

Readers of the first volume will not be surprised that some of those alive at the end of Sin Killer will no longer enjoy that happy state by the end of The Wandering Hill. Means of death are varied, but death by buffalo - and no, not the stampede - gets in early for most horribly memorable. The story itself remains fresh and unpredictable, and Tamsin develops nicely as a memorable, scrappy, bad-tempered heroine, maturing in her attitudes as life and death teach her harsh lessons abut themselves. One suspects, with two volumes to go, there are a surfeit of both on the way.

[Bonnie Plested · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Lonesome Dove and got hooked. Read the series, and watched the DVDs of the series thanks to our local public libarary.

If you haven't read The Sin Killer, please do go back and read. This will be a two star book without background to make you more interested in the characters. Thank goodness my friend loned me Sin Killer to read before ploughing through the many characters in this series.

The Wandering Hill refers to a Native American belief that a certain hill is filled with devils that will attack anyone who comes too near. Naturally, that means the wandering hill threatens danger . . . if not death. The omen turns out to be prescient in this story.

The book finished with plenty of unanswered questions, which of course leads onto the 3rd and 4th book in this series.

[Rod · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a little worried that I'll run out of McMurtry novels to read, after I read recently in one of his memoirs that he thinks Rhino Ranch may well be his last. So I went back to the Berrybender series that I missed when it came out originally. Not his best, but enjoyable and I have no doubt that I'll finish the series (this is the second of four). I am struck by the way McMurtry, at his best (and there are little glimmers here) uniquely and unpretentiously captures the thoughts of people who are refusing--or attempting and failing--to understand another person.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

In book two of the Berrybender saga, outspoken Tasmin Berrybender has married Jim "Sinkiller" Snow and is living in the rugged mountains of the American West with her diverse family. Also present as characters are several famous mountain men. As the winter progresses we have greed, lust, and death as well as struggles with the Indians. While not up to the Lonesome Doves series by the same author, it is an engrossing tale of the American West in the 1830s. The title refers a a mystic hill that seems to keep appearing in locations associated with tragic death.

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the second book of the Berrybender clan’s adventures in the 1830s frontier America. This family has its issues and the story became a little too silly in parts but I still enjoyed it overall. Just like the first book in the Berrybender series, I did not like how the story just ended. Not sure if I should continue on with this crazy British family series or find reading enjoyment else were.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Better than the first one in the series, and look forward to reading the third one, after a few others on my waiting list. After the McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series and S. C. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon, I feel exhausted and after, completing the Berrybender Narratives, I the may have to read more books with clearer distinctions between good and evil, and with happy endings. Something less realistic…

[JCB · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not exactly ‘Lonesome Dove’ or ‘Terms of Endearment’ regarding quality or insight, this second book of a 4 novel series is still entertaining and literary enough, as it weaves in fictional and historical figures throughout its story.

While sometimes veering off into absurdity, or just downright silliness, it does have enough to recommend it. And to keep the reader going for the next two installments.

[Darlis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good companion book since I am reading Undaunted Courage. Several of the same people and some real trappers show up here, about 25 years after the Lewis and Clark Expedition. There are some interesting tales, and it is episodic so it is fun to hear all these independent stories. It does help to be interested in the mountain men era of US history.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Silly and not my cup of tea. I read the whole series for lack of anything better to do. Depictions of historical figures are not accurate. I get it, it's fiction, but that bugged me. Overall a silly but occasionally entertaining series.

[Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Berrybender stories are still like a junior Lonesome Dove with emphasis on the cartoonish. Still enjoyable.

[Brian Fagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why do I ever doubt Larry McMurtry? So often, I read a passage and think, "That's not how a woman would react to that". A minute later I say to myself, "G-D you McMurtry, you're right, that IS how a woman would respond to that!". What writer portrays the vicissitudes of women better than Larry McMurtry? None that I'm aware of.

In "The Wandering Hill", the second of the four Berrybender Narratives books, the family from England continues on their American West expedition in the year 1833. In volume 1, they traveled up the Missouri River in a steamboat with their sizable contingent of aides and employees: the boat captain, hunters, a cook, a naturalist, a painter, etc. It would be a stretch to call them a team, since that would imply that they work together in harmony, which they don't. Lord Berrybender's wild impulses keep them at odds with him and with one another. His oldest daughter, Tasmin, married the frontiersman Jim Snow, and as episode 2 begins, the entire motley crew is taking a breather at Pomp Charbonneau's trading post along the Yellowstone River.

Most of volume 2 centers around the difficulties that Tasmin and Jim are having in their married state. A baby has arrived. Tasmin's sharp tongue draws a punch from Jim, and they both begin to have serious concerns about what they've gotten themselves into. Tasmin realizes that she hasn't given any thought to their future - will she adapt to a nomadic life? Would Jim ever agree to live a cultured life in England? Jim goes off to fetch his other two wives, young Indian women, and overall, Tasmin notices that he is spending more and more time away from her. Is this a prelude to a breakup?

The Wandering Hill of the book's title refers to an old Indian legend. As long as anyone can remember, there have been stories about a hill with a solitary tree on top, that appears in different places at different times. Those who see it often run into bad luck immediately afterwards. It is said that the hill is inhabited by devils that shoot poison arrows into those who stray too close.

McMurtry infuses his frontier-era stories with tidbits from his knowledge of western lore and history. We learn that "in trapping, workhorses were used mainly for packing out furs - the trappers themselves usually walked, which meant that twenty miles was about as far as they could expect to get in a day". He takes a number of breaks in the action in "The Wandering Hill" to let his characters ponder some ethical issues near and dear to his own heart: animal rights, the coming of the white man and the loss of wilderness.

As the novel unfolds, McMurtry gives us a teaser as to what we can expect in volumes 3 and 4. It appears that Lord Berrybender plans to make for Santa Fe, and ultimately on to New Orleans. Jim Snow is deeply concerned for the safety of the group and feels that floating back down the Missouri and intercepting one of the well-used pioneer trails towards Santa Fe would be prudent. Unfortunately Lord Berrybender has heard about hunting opportunities further south along the Rockies, and insists on the direct route, which Jim knows will take them through the lands of the Comanches and the Kiowa.