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Red Rover
A stirring novel about idealism laid waste and the haunting, redemptive bonds of friendship
Deirdre McNamer has won praise for the intelligence, beauty, precision, and sweep of her fiction. Her first novel in seven years, Red Rover tells the story of three Montana men who get swept up in the machinations of World War II and its fateful aftermath. As boys, Aidan and Neil Tierney ride horseback for miles across unfenced prairie, picturing themselves as gauchos, horsemen of the Argentine pampas. A hundred miles away, Roland Taliaferro wants only to escape the violence and poverty of his family. As war approaches, Aidan and Roland join the FBI. Roland serves Stateside while Aidan—in a gesture as exuberant as a child in a game of Red Rover—requests hazardous duty and is sent as an undercover agent to Nazi-ridden Argentina. Neil becomes a B-29 bomber pilot.
Aidan returns to Montana ill, shaken, and divided from Roland over the FBI’s role in the war. On a cold December day in 1946, he is found fatally shot, an apparent suicide. The FBI stays silent. Only when Neil and Roland are very old men, meeting by chance in a rehabilitation facility, does Aidan’s death become illuminated, atoned for, and fully put to rest. This beautifully crafted, far- ranging novel will catch readers up in the grace and hard truths of the lives it unfolds.
Deirdre McNamer has won praise for the intelligence, beauty, precision, and sweep of her fiction. Her first novel in seven years, Red Rover tells the story of three Montana men who get swept up in the machinations of World War II and its fateful aftermath. As boys, Aidan and Neil Tierney ride horseback for miles across unfenced prairie, picturing themselves as gauchos, horsemen of the Argentine pampas. A hundred miles away, Roland Taliaferro wants only to escape the violence and poverty of his family. As war approaches, Aidan and Roland join the FBI. Roland serves Stateside while Aidan—in a gesture as exuberant as a child in a game of Red Rover—requests hazardous duty and is sent as an undercover agent to Nazi-ridden Argentina. Neil becomes a B-29 bomber pilot.
Aidan returns to Montana ill, shaken, and divided from Roland over the FBI’s role in the war. On a cold December day in 1946, he is found fatally shot, an apparent suicide. The FBI stays silent. Only when Neil and Roland are very old men, meeting by chance in a rehabilitation facility, does Aidan’s death become illuminated, atoned for, and fully put to rest. This beautifully crafted, far- ranging novel will catch readers up in the grace and hard truths of the lives it unfolds.
264 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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April 21, 2020
According to the back cover, "Red Rover will catch readers up in the grace and hard truths of the lives it unfolds and is a beautifully crafted, far-ranging novel of idealism laid waste and the haunting, redemptive bonds of friendship."
This is the third book I have read by this author, and each one has been deeply moving, vivid, and intense.
In the first chapter we meet Aidan and Neil Tierney, ages 13 and 9, as they head out into the empty spaces of Montana near their home in Neva. It is 1927. At first I thought that any incident that might happen during this adventure would be the focus of the story, but it served more as an illustration of the relationship between the two.
The rest of the book details what happens to Neil and Aidan as adults, jumping back and forth in time and gradually (oh, so gradually) revealing details about their war service, their careers after the war, and life in 2003.
I am finding it hard to try to describe the story without giving away too much. I'm sorry, I wanted to say so much more but all I can manage is this: if you have not read anything by this author yet, please consider starting with this one. you won't regret it. And you will find yourself as nearly speechless afterwards as I am.
This is the third book I have read by this author, and each one has been deeply moving, vivid, and intense.
In the first chapter we meet Aidan and Neil Tierney, ages 13 and 9, as they head out into the empty spaces of Montana near their home in Neva. It is 1927. At first I thought that any incident that might happen during this adventure would be the focus of the story, but it served more as an illustration of the relationship between the two.
The rest of the book details what happens to Neil and Aidan as adults, jumping back and forth in time and gradually (oh, so gradually) revealing details about their war service, their careers after the war, and life in 2003.
I am finding it hard to try to describe the story without giving away too much. I'm sorry, I wanted to say so much more but all I can manage is this: if you have not read anything by this author yet, please consider starting with this one. you won't regret it. And you will find yourself as nearly speechless afterwards as I am.
April 26, 2012
The end-flap of the dust jacket on this book relates a storyline extracted from it that sounds straightforward enough, but McNamer has written something far more complex and fascinating. She tells a story with a beginning, middle and an end, but not at all in that order. While the narrative is set almost entirely in Montana, timelines jump back and forth between 1927, 1939, 1944-46, and 2003. There's an extensive catalog of characters who get their time on center stage, their stories sometimes overlapping with others. Meanwhile, the supposed central characters disappear for long periods of time and we learn about them only indirectly.
Sounds maybe complicated, but I found the novel absorbing from beginning to end. Part of that owes to the subject matter. Two G-men employed by J. Edgar Hoover's wartime FBI start out as friends, and then something happens that sets them at odds. A young brother outlives his older brother by more than 50 years, but memory continues to bind them together. And in what seems to be a random universe, where people live and then die as if life itself were a plague, there are chance parallels like a B-29 running out of fuel as it returns from a bombing mission to Tokyo and a car running out of gas in a Montana snowstorm. Much of what makes the novel absorbing owes to McNamer's wonderful way with language, which is often poetic and haunting in its use of metaphor to capture nuances of emotion, attitude, and physical sensation. It's not a book you speed read. It's meant to be savored and puzzled over at a more leisurely pace. It's a book to get lost in; I heartily recommend it.
Sounds maybe complicated, but I found the novel absorbing from beginning to end. Part of that owes to the subject matter. Two G-men employed by J. Edgar Hoover's wartime FBI start out as friends, and then something happens that sets them at odds. A young brother outlives his older brother by more than 50 years, but memory continues to bind them together. And in what seems to be a random universe, where people live and then die as if life itself were a plague, there are chance parallels like a B-29 running out of fuel as it returns from a bombing mission to Tokyo and a car running out of gas in a Montana snowstorm. Much of what makes the novel absorbing owes to McNamer's wonderful way with language, which is often poetic and haunting in its use of metaphor to capture nuances of emotion, attitude, and physical sensation. It's not a book you speed read. It's meant to be savored and puzzled over at a more leisurely pace. It's a book to get lost in; I heartily recommend it.
April 15, 2010
I really wanted to like this book, but I just didn't . . . not really. The beginning is so promising, with some really beautiful, stark descriptions and raw emotions. But the book got more disappointing as it went along. The characters from the beginning are not further developed, and new characters (who mainly were less interesting) are brought into the mix. Also, the book uses a flashback style (switching between 2003, 1943, 1947, etc.) which is fine in theory, but, as executed, felt quite choppy.
December 10, 2010
This is a book I did not finish, for reasons I won't enumerate. I did get one good thing from it, though. I like this quote about needing to believe a cause (war) was just simply because you suffered and gave your all for it:
"A boy loses a leg and his friends and all his innocence for a cause, he's going to want very much to believe in the value of the cause. As are those who send him to his diminishment. Great pain adding up to nothing, for nothing, about nothing---that's what can't be borne."
"A boy loses a leg and his friends and all his innocence for a cause, he's going to want very much to believe in the value of the cause. As are those who send him to his diminishment. Great pain adding up to nothing, for nothing, about nothing---that's what can't be borne."
January 30, 2019
Red Rover is just about perfect. You should take your time with it because the little things that don't make sense at first become important as the story unfolds. I found myself going back and re-reading earlier chapters after recognizing a clue.
The story jumps back and forth over eight decades. It could be a difficult read, but Deirdre McNamer writes in simple, lovely prose that is easy to follow. I loved meeting the same characters as children, young adults, and old men. The soul is filled with all the wisdom of a long life, but the body and mind become unreliable. The intent is keen, but the perceptions are flawed.
Others on Goodreads have criticized the ending, but I think it ends exactly as it should. Everything that needs to be there is there, and nothing more. The late, great Jim Harrison called Red Rover stunning, and it is.
The story jumps back and forth over eight decades. It could be a difficult read, but Deirdre McNamer writes in simple, lovely prose that is easy to follow. I loved meeting the same characters as children, young adults, and old men. The soul is filled with all the wisdom of a long life, but the body and mind become unreliable. The intent is keen, but the perceptions are flawed.
Others on Goodreads have criticized the ending, but I think it ends exactly as it should. Everything that needs to be there is there, and nothing more. The late, great Jim Harrison called Red Rover stunning, and it is.
February 24, 2018
Intertwined lives and a woven story of life.
November 15, 2018
I wasn't all that impressed with this book. Although the writing itself was good, the switching around in times and characters was confusing. Also I didn't care much for the ending.
August 25, 2012
I usually dislike ensemble novels, and this was only somewhat of an exception. Overall, the writing is so lovely that I'm about ready to forgive all my qualms with the novel and go out and read everything else McNamer has written. It was really fantastic—every time I got frustrated with the novel's structure/plot, I was kept going by great sentences. I especially enjoyed the lovely descriptions of the western landscape.
Indeed, the book moves well between time and, somewhat, place, but the movement between characters wasn't working for me. McNamer opens with two young brothers riding across the prairie. I was instantly intrigued and invested in their story, though as it turns out the book doesn't really belong to either of them, to my chagrin. Instead, Roland Taliaferro, a friend of the elder Tierney brother, seems to drive the bulk of the novel, with various characters serving his primary narrative (sort of). Which would have been okay, as Roland's story is a good one, but I didn't care about the coroner Mix, or his wife, or Warren the reporter, or the pink-haired girl who falls off her skateboard, or etc. etc. There were far too many "important" characters shoved into this 250-page book, and I felt that the three truly important characters, and especially Neil and Aidan Tierney, were cheated. Neil worst of all. One of the most evocative chapters concerns Neil on a bombing run in WWII, though this never really leads anywhere, and soon enough Neil all but disappears from the book. Especially disappointing as his plight, if temporary and somewhat anecdotal, as most boyhood incidents tend to be, is what opens the book and draws the reader in. (Also unfortunate was the decision to depict these two youthful characters on the book's cover, on horseback.) Anyway, I wanted more Neil, I wanted more Aidan, and I thought the novel got caught up in a whole lot of unimportant characterization. Great writing; I just wish it had focused on other things.
Indeed, the book moves well between time and, somewhat, place, but the movement between characters wasn't working for me. McNamer opens with two young brothers riding across the prairie. I was instantly intrigued and invested in their story, though as it turns out the book doesn't really belong to either of them, to my chagrin. Instead, Roland Taliaferro, a friend of the elder Tierney brother, seems to drive the bulk of the novel, with various characters serving his primary narrative (sort of). Which would have been okay, as Roland's story is a good one, but I didn't care about the coroner Mix, or his wife, or Warren the reporter, or the pink-haired girl who falls off her skateboard, or etc. etc. There were far too many "important" characters shoved into this 250-page book, and I felt that the three truly important characters, and especially Neil and Aidan Tierney, were cheated. Neil worst of all. One of the most evocative chapters concerns Neil on a bombing run in WWII, though this never really leads anywhere, and soon enough Neil all but disappears from the book. Especially disappointing as his plight, if temporary and somewhat anecdotal, as most boyhood incidents tend to be, is what opens the book and draws the reader in. (Also unfortunate was the decision to depict these two youthful characters on the book's cover, on horseback.) Anyway, I wanted more Neil, I wanted more Aidan, and I thought the novel got caught up in a whole lot of unimportant characterization. Great writing; I just wish it had focused on other things.
March 17, 2011
First, no, RED ROVER is not a book about a dog. Deidre McNamer could have chosen a better title for this very moving story.
And whoever chose the cover (or dust jacket) should have picked something less misleading. If they had, I probably would have read this 2007 book sooner. But this picture gives a false impression; RED ROVER begins with two boys riding horses, but it soon moves forward in time and to other Montana locations.
RED ROVER is a mystery. After Aidan Tierney goes to college and law school, he joins the FBI and requests hazardous duty. He is sent as a secret agent to Argentina and returns to the U.S. a very, very sick man. Soon he is dead.
The mystery of RED ROVER is how and why Aidan died and who is responsible. Was it suicide, an accident, or murder?
So RED ROVER looks at characters who played parts in Aidan’s life. We see some characters beginning when they were children and study characters’ lives before, during, and after World War II. We see events from more than one perspective as the parts of the book take us back and forth in time, right up to 2003 when most characters are in their 80s and 90s.
RED ROVER is a short book, 264 pages. It covers so much time and so many character studies, this could easily be a monstrosity. Many, maybe most, authors would have included details and whole paragraphs that would bore most readers. But RED ROVER’s descriptions and character studies are tight, with no wasted words. So what could have been tedious is, instead, engrossing.
It is also interesting to note that McNamer felt she had to write this. It is based on the story of her uncle, originally meant to be nonfiction.
And whoever chose the cover (or dust jacket) should have picked something less misleading. If they had, I probably would have read this 2007 book sooner. But this picture gives a false impression; RED ROVER begins with two boys riding horses, but it soon moves forward in time and to other Montana locations.
RED ROVER is a mystery. After Aidan Tierney goes to college and law school, he joins the FBI and requests hazardous duty. He is sent as a secret agent to Argentina and returns to the U.S. a very, very sick man. Soon he is dead.
The mystery of RED ROVER is how and why Aidan died and who is responsible. Was it suicide, an accident, or murder?
So RED ROVER looks at characters who played parts in Aidan’s life. We see some characters beginning when they were children and study characters’ lives before, during, and after World War II. We see events from more than one perspective as the parts of the book take us back and forth in time, right up to 2003 when most characters are in their 80s and 90s.
RED ROVER is a short book, 264 pages. It covers so much time and so many character studies, this could easily be a monstrosity. Many, maybe most, authors would have included details and whole paragraphs that would bore most readers. But RED ROVER’s descriptions and character studies are tight, with no wasted words. So what could have been tedious is, instead, engrossing.
It is also interesting to note that McNamer felt she had to write this. It is based on the story of her uncle, originally meant to be nonfiction.
June 29, 2014
Novels set in familiar places are often a disappointment. We expect the places and institutions and people to be accurate, even though we know that the author has a license to write fiction. So I came to this novel "Red Rover" by Deirdre McNamer anchored in the Sweet Grass Hills of Montana (ancestral homestead of my father) prepared to say "That's not how it is." But Deidre McNamer got the Hills, and the story's transect south to Butte and Missoula, exactly true to place.
A few years ago, during a family vigil at a residential nursing facility (coincidentally, in Missoula), I matched up the often silent and wheelchair-ridden residents with the photos and biographies of their younger selves, posted at their room entrances. In "Red Rover," these life stories come in decadal chapters that mostly work in time-tidal rhythms, working forward from the 1920's and backwards from the present, slowly revealing the wartime betrayal of a favorite son (" ,,, a time collision so violent it threw certain humans away").
This is a coming-of-age novel, not just of adolescence, but of the greater courage needed near the end of life. In the end, McNamer shows us the survivors. Those who are uprooted and transplanted do poorly. Those who are at home, who don't need a GPS unit to know exactly where they are, are rooted and ready.
A few years ago, during a family vigil at a residential nursing facility (coincidentally, in Missoula), I matched up the often silent and wheelchair-ridden residents with the photos and biographies of their younger selves, posted at their room entrances. In "Red Rover," these life stories come in decadal chapters that mostly work in time-tidal rhythms, working forward from the 1920's and backwards from the present, slowly revealing the wartime betrayal of a favorite son (" ,,, a time collision so violent it threw certain humans away").
This is a coming-of-age novel, not just of adolescence, but of the greater courage needed near the end of life. In the end, McNamer shows us the survivors. Those who are uprooted and transplanted do poorly. Those who are at home, who don't need a GPS unit to know exactly where they are, are rooted and ready.
February 24, 2012
There’s a mystery here; not a who done it, but why. The unraveling of that mystery is the ostensible plot of this novel, but there are many things going on here. McNamer writes beautifully about life on the Montana plains and mine fields, from the 1920s to current. There’s family drama, WW2, the suspicions of small town life and the difficulty of fitting in if you’re different, the obstacles we all face growing older. And over all is the FBI (!) and the spirit of J. Edgar and his obsessions. Yes, it does sound like a strange combination of threads and themes. One thing McNamer did that I love (in novels or any medium)--she takes all these threads, these separate narratives, and bounces them off each other. They casually intersect and then take off on the new story line. Just wonderful.
February 14, 2013
Red Rover by Deirdre McNamer opens with Neil and Aiden, young brothers, heading out on their horses across the Montana plains on a camping trip. The descriptions of Montana’s wide open spaces and the interaction between the two boys will keep you reading. When WWII strikes Neil heads off to Europe as a pilot and Aiden goes to South America taking on dangerous cloak and dagger missions for the FBI. After the war ends Neil is delighted for find himself still in one piece but Aiden has returned ill, bitter and disillusioned. All Roland Taliferro has ever wanted to be is an FBI agent. The events in South America will alter the course of Aiden’s life and the career of agent Roland Taliferro. Neil never fully accepts the FBI version of events. It will be many years before a chance encounter brings him the truth.
May 28, 2016
Montanan Deirdre McNamer has beautifully captured a moment in time from the late 1920s when a young boy could ride his horse forever over unfenced prairie. Her descriptions of the beauty of the land and the fierceness of a winter storm on a Montana mountain pass are as true today as then. McNamer's descriptions of a B-29 bomber pilot's missions in 1945 take the reader directly into the heart of the experience. As these narratives are woven throughout the novel, the story told is of the bonds of family and of friendship and the struggle to come to terms with the death of one of two brothers. Although the story is fiction the author has stated that the idea began as nonfiction regarding the death of her uncle directly after World War II.
April 10, 2008
This book was very hard to put down. At first I found the jumping back and forth in time to be disconcerting but then I found it added to the tension. It's a story of idealism, betrayal, and friendship set against the backdrop of Montana in the latter half of the twentieth century. There's a lot of information about conditions in Montana over the years and some about the FBI. The main characters are three men and one serves as a bomber pilot in WWII while the others join the FBI. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in western and environmental history. It reminds me somewhat of Wallce Stegner.
August 16, 2011
The writing is beautiful, but the story itself is weakly executed. The time jumps are choppy, many new characters are completely unnecessary, and most of the stunning revelations are couched in confusing situations and language...confusing for the reader and for the characters themselves. Through this confusion, it is hard to say if anyone in the story reaches any kind of real resolution, or if their lives would have been any different if fate had not brought them together in the end. This story would have been stronger as a novella with fewer characters and less reliance on the magic of complex coincidence.
August 23, 2009
This book itself was a little like one of the messages it tries to convey: that life is disappointing, and endings are never as satisfying as we want them to be. I thought I knew what this story was about, as it started - but in the middle the book began to go in several different directions. And while it was nice to understand a little more about the different characters in the book, at the end I had to ask, "why did you bother to tell me about that?" As I said, it was an ending that didn't really tie things up as neatly as I'd like. A bit like real life, I guess.
May 24, 2012
This is a terrific read. I've been on a roll with excellent novels the past month. Set in Montana, the book's chapters arc between the WW II era and the present day unfolding the story of brothers Aiden and Neil Tierney and Roland Taliaferro, Aiden and Roland become friends in law school and are both recruited by the FBI on the eve of WW II. McNamer is masterful not only in creating characters you care about, she also captures the essence of time and place. Her depiction of the paranoid culture of the Bureau is chilling.
February 14, 2013
Stunning. Good hook in the first chapter.
Parts of sentences I have to read over and over and stare out the window - to pull myself away from the story, the rational - to savor the wordplay fully. Many times.
I had no idea where it was going, what kind of book it was. What genre? Why had I picked it up to begin with? - in a small bookstore in a little town in Texas, thousands of miles from home. What a great way to read a book - coming at it naked and open ready for discovery.
Parts of sentences I have to read over and over and stare out the window - to pull myself away from the story, the rational - to savor the wordplay fully. Many times.
I had no idea where it was going, what kind of book it was. What genre? Why had I picked it up to begin with? - in a small bookstore in a little town in Texas, thousands of miles from home. What a great way to read a book - coming at it naked and open ready for discovery.
October 11, 2013
This cover is deceptive. It is not a book about horses or horseback riding. It's about a family in Montana from 1927 to 2003 and various community members and others who intersect their lives at critical junctures. The pieces fit together in a way that is not clear until the very end, but is very satisfying. The characters are well-drawn, the prose is perfectly pitched. I see why it was on many "best of the year" lists for 2010. Highly recommend it.
August 13, 2013
WOW!! this one makes up for all the duds this summer. FANTASTIC.
don't even really now how to describe it. I keep thinking maybe it's likethat movie no country for old men and if that is actually anything like this book, it would be so great.
she is just so amazing in her descriptions. wow.
Great read!!!
don't even really now how to describe it. I keep thinking maybe it's likethat movie no country for old men and if that is actually anything like this book, it would be so great.
she is just so amazing in her descriptions. wow.
Great read!!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 13, 2007
In just about ten years I will be in the place the characters in this story are. Age gallops on and teeters to ??? Our young minds can't comprehend why our old bodies no can longer leap for joy without an Advil chaser. But oh the memories!
April 17, 2008
Tangential history of two brothers, both accomplished, and how their lives are intertwined with multiple charactors and events. Tasty tale of poetic justice, redemption, and the balance of powers. A glimpse of how governments work.
March 19, 2011
The characters were well developed and not predictable cookie cutter people. The theme of taking care of each other through thick and thin even when you don't feel much like it, mirrored the shades of gray in life.
February 3, 2010
If you liked Whistling Season, you’ll like this one too. The novel is split into three-ish sections, each focusing on a different character. The basic story follows two brothers in Montana and through World War II and into old age. It’s difficult to explain. I really enjoyed it.
August 3, 2007
Dee's best book. Fact.
August 12, 2007
Dee's writing is incredibly lyrical -- the landscapes of this story are incredibly divergent, yet I feel placed in each.
August 21, 2007
some gorgeous prose and well-drawn characters, but i'm sad to say that a series of unlikely plot contrivances bring down the book.
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August 25, 2007Excellent book. I thought it was well written. One of the best books I've read that uses Montana as the setting and a good little twist. On the order of The Power of the Dog.
October 22, 2007
I found this book a bit dissatisfying. I couldn't tell where the author wanted to go and the jumping around between time and place became annoying.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews