Going Home

Skye's West #11

by Richard S. Wheeler

It is 1832, six years after he deserted the Royal Navy, when Barnaby Skye has a chance to return to England to clear his name and take up employment with the Hudson's Bay Company. But "Mister Skye," as he insists on being called, is as much a magnet for trouble as he is a legend among mountain men, and this opportunity of a lifetime begins to disintegrate almost from the moment it is presented to him.

With his devoted Crow wife, Victoria, an eccentric botanist named Alistair Nutmeg, and a strange pariah dog following along, Skye makes his way west to Fort Vancouver in the Oregon country to begin his journey home.

He is adept at dodging Blackfeet war parties and staving off starvation, but when the Hudson's Bay ship Cadboro makes a stopover in Mexican California, Skye's luck-generally bad to begin with-runs out. In Going Home , Skye fights Mexican bandits, murderous Pacific coastal Indians, thirst, starvation, and despair, as he learns where home really is and what honor really means.

Genres: Westerns

320 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 2000

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

There are other authors with this name. One writes Marine Corps history. Another, Civil War history. Another writes in the political sciences.

Richard S. (Shaw) Wheeler was born in Milwaukee in 1935 and grew up in nearby Wauwatosa.

Reviews

[Milo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard S. Wheeler, the author, is one of the most informative and educational writers of the Western genre. His knowledge of everything western is simply amazing.
The Barnaby Skye series is like a magnet which keeps pulling the reader back for another dose.
Going Home is no exception to that attraction.
No spoilers.. just read his books.

[Neena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Western fiction - this guy is prolific! 34 Sky's West novels! three Sam Flint Novels.

[Doug Porter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up for 25 cents while my daughter was at gymnastics class, then ignored it. I've never read any of the other Barnaby Skye books and don't specifically remember reading anything by Wheeler, though I suspect I have at some point... and I was pleasantly surprised.

This is really a 3.5 star for me. I found it engaging and while it bordered on repetitive in a Job-like way, it landed on the acceptable side for me.

I did enjoy the number of different ways that the phrase, "Going Home", applies to the story. From the apparently obvious ("going home to see my father") to the pleasantly surprising ("ending up at my wife's home, which is really my home, too"") to the slightly more subtle ("home is anywhere my family is").

Anyway, I won't go hunting more Skye books, but I'm pleased I read this one and if another jumps into my hands from the 25 cent shelf one day, well, I'll be ok with that.

[Topher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Following the advice of my friend Chris, I've been giving westerns a try. This is a middle book in the 2nd series about Barnaby Skye (aka the Skye's West series), a press-ganged british sailor deserter making a life for himself as a mountain man in the Rockies in the mid-19th century. I've generally really liked this series, but had a hard time with the first 100 or so pages - there was nothing wrong with the writing; I just didn't want to read where I thought the story was going. It turns out I was wrong, and I found the rest of the novel very enjoyable.

[Gary Wallis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read . The author really did his homework on this one. The story moves along at a good clip but sometimes gets kind of frustrating as bad thing happens after bad thing followed by a bad thing. The characters are good but whatever became of Mr. Nutmeg ???? This is my first Barnaby Skye book and I will probably read more of his stories. Nothing like a good mountain man book . Remember, one of the reviewers of the book claimed that after reading this book, you could not stay being a mere mortal !!!!

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

For Barnaby Skye, it seems that if it wasn't for bad luck he'd have no luck at all. He had a good woman, though, and ended up with a good dog and eventually the rest was resolved. A realistic story about life in that country at that time.

[Violet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. I really like this series. Barnaby and Victoria constantly overcome.

[Darrell]

Like a good western every now and then quick read.