A Sudden Country

by Karen Fisher

A vivid and revelatory novel based on actual events of the 1847 Oregon migration, A Sudden Country follows two characters of remarkable complexity and strength in a journey of survival and redemption.

James MacLaren, once a resourceful and ambitious Hudson’s Bay Company trader, has renounced his aspirations for a quiet family life in the Bitterroot wilderness. Yet his life is overturned in the winter of 1846, when his Nez Perce wife deserts him and his children die of smallpox. In the grip of a profound sorrow, MacLaren, whose home once spanned a continent, sets out to find his wife. But an act of secret vengeance changes his course, introducing him to a different wife and Lucy Mitchell, journeying westward with her family.

Lucy, a remarried widow, careful mother, and reluctant emigrant, is drawn at once to the self-possessed MacLaren. Convinced that he is the key to her family’s safe passage, she persuades her husband to employ him. As their hidden stories and obsessions unfold, and pasts and cultures collide, both Lucy and MacLaren must confront the people they have truly been, are, and may become.

Alive with incident and insight, presenting with rare scope and intimacy the complex relations among nineteenth-century traders, immigrants, and Native Americans, A Sudden Country is, above all, a heroic and unforgettable story of love and loss, sacrifice and understanding.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Westerns, Book Club, Historical, Novels, Literature

400 pages, Paperback

First published August 16, 2005

Reviews

[Sarahlynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved and HATED this one. Don't do it. Don't do it! DON'T --- OK, nevermind. Go ahead. See if I care.

review:

First let me just say that A SUDDEN COUNTRY is the author's first novel and was a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. Seriously.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was reading this book and it was making me crabby. Now I've finished. In fact, I finished the novel quite quickly, as I raced to the end to see how the two main story lines would resolve. (More on those in a moment.)

First a bit on why the book annoyed me so much as I read it. I called it "Madame Bovary on the Oregon Trail" and it's helpful to note that I didn't have a blast reading Flaubert's masterpiece, either. I spent the first half of A Sudden Country talking aloud to the female main character, Lucy. "Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. You idiot. You'll ruin everything. Seriously, don't do it. Fine, do it. Die if you want; lose your children, whatever. See if I care."

The characters in the novel are nuanced and flawed. I mean, really flawed. And that's good and all, but it's hard to like any of them. Hard life, hard people, occasionally making stupid choices possibly just because they can. So rarely do they have significant choices to make. Anyway.

Sentence fragments. I was annoyed by them throughout. But my least favorite thing about the writing was my friend Jeanne's favorite part, so it's obviously a matter of taste. Jeanne loved the way the story unfolded slowly, with a sense of mystery. It drove me crazy. I thought the vague, dreamlike, and occasionally misleading language drew attention to itself and took me out of the story. I spent the first few chapters doing math, trying to figure out how Lucy and Israel had all these kids when they'd only been married 4 years, then guessing which kids came from which previous marriages.

Reviewers on Amazon were split between loving the writing style (sentence fragments, partial explanations, imagery-rich details short on clarity) and hating having to read certain sections more than once to figure out what was going on. I found myself somewhere in the middle. Sometimes the style worked for me, sometimes it annoyed me. The author's comment on this issue: "this novel took over ten years, and most of it was written very late at night, by a tired person. So if you find it dreamlike and hypnotic, that’s probably why. I advise reading it under the same circumstances."

I get that! Enough with the criticism already.

One of the greatest strengths of the novel is the amount of historical detail the author includes "effortlessly." I'm not usually a huge fan of reading history and require massive doses of personal narrative to make the lessons go down. (To this day, almost everything I know about ancient Egypt came from a children's novel my mom brought to distract me when I was home sick.) But at times in A Sudden Country I found the historical anecdotes (daily life on the Oregon Trail) more compelling than story. The author did a really really good job with her research and with writing it into the story in such a way that it was enjoyable rather than pedantic or distracting.

And then there's the story arc itself. I love the ending, though I know many people hated it. I think Lucy's story arc ended just perfectly. Everything was not wrapped up in a neat little bow, but her life never really was particularly tidy (unlike her home or her campsite). The other main point of view character and story arc . . . dropped. Something was building, building, building, I was excited to see how it came out, and then - poof! Done, over, kaput without ever reaching a conclusion. Without ever reaching a confrontation, a destination, anything. It just failed. This frustrated me. Doesn't it break all the rules to cut off the story like that without any sort of resolution? But the more distance I have from the book, the happier I am with the author's choice to handle the story the way she did.

I read a book club version of the novel, and it included an interview with the author as well as a reader's guide bound into the paperback. You know how sometimes there's one tiny thing someone says or does that jumps out at you and bothers you so much it colors everything else you know about them and their work? (Tom Cruise's religion, Orson Scott Card's politics, David Hasselhoff's habit of wearing his shirts unbuttoned) There were two of these such moments in the author interview, and they nearly spoiled the whole reading experience for me. Now that I've done a bit more research, I suspect that either the author's tone didn't come across perfectly in the interview, or it was edited unsympathetically. (Note this interview is much more humble and likable, IMO.)

"The road to publication was as rough, believe me, as the journey I was writing about." I would have laughed at that line at a writer's workshop, but not so much immediately after finishing an engrossing and emotional read. Really?! Your search for an agent endangered the lives of your children every day? You had to leave behind every thing you held most dear? Sheesh. I know it's hard to get published, but that's a little Rumpelstiltskin.

This review is far too critical. I'm so glad I read this book. I think you should read it too. It's very good. And educational. Wait! Stop! I mean that in a good way.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am through and through a Westerner. This fabulous novel captures the grandeur and ferocity of the West's landscapes and reminds us of the courage and pain western migration called for in both women and men. A SUDDEN COUNTRY is a love story, a physical journey from the "civilized East" to Oregon, and a meditation on place.

Here are a few pertinent sentences from the book:

On the naming of western places:
"Such disordering of a place so perfect after its own truth,in the name of making some imperfect and impoverished version of another? Did this world so need improving?"

On undertaking an 1847 journey west:
"Lucy stood there thinking how little point there seemed in any past so far away, and how little point there seemed in talking of the future over which they had not the least control, toiling as they were toward something she could scarcely imagine."

On love:
"He wanted to tell her: love was a cheat. All hopes, all desires were nothing but pitiful inventions born of our own ignorance and sorrow. The things we sought were never there when we arrived, or never stayed. Love was not the last eternal benediction."

On sorrow:
She said,'There's jagged times. Till hurt wears off.'"

I could go on and on. This is a wonderful book that seeped into my pores and won't let me go.

[Becca · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wonder why I ever care that a book is a finalist for a book award. I wonder why I am swayed by the positive reviews posted inside or on the back of a book. I need to stick to word of mouth, for most award winning books these days are dark, gloomy, and too explicit. There was a cloud hanging over my head when I read this book. I hardly made it to the end. I wasn't reading so thoroughly during the last thirty pages and the ending was lame. This book was well researched and at times written beautifully, but I had to spend too much time keep track of present and past. Moreover, I didn't like the characters very much. Lucy chose one flawed, dysfunctional man to be her lover. She wished for romance to cope with her life and I suppose she found it. She hated having to live the pioneer life and leave her home just because her second husband dreamed of living in Oregon. This book definitely made me glad to live in the 21st century. The author was all over the place and it was confusing. I was aching for her to tell it like it was because I didn't have the energy or the interest to read between the lines. It was often written like poetry and it went overboard for me. I only gave it two stars because I recognize the effort and research she put into the book. It wasn't a good book for me. No thanks.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe that Karen Fisher did a terrific job of providing a first-hand look into the American wilderness of 150 years ago. I appreciated the language that Fisher used for its historic accuracy, though I had to re-read some passages and really think about what was meant by them. The story also is filled with a gritty, crude simplicity that I loved. I recommend this book highly.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

engrossed in this fierce and poetic landscape for the last few days, i put down the book with a feeling of gratitude and awe. toward author karen fisher for having the grace and skill to put all this into words, to the real characters who long ago wandered our taken-for-granted west with such bravery and despair and tenacity, either blindly or with maddening precision, and with such wildly varied motives and hopes and histories. ALL the characters of this land, and all the more for somehow enduring the cheap stereotypes that fling themselves at the most disturbing of realities. i love this book for its broadness of scope and its inclusiveness, for pondering the greatest of mysteries against one of the most mysterious settings rendered by human endeavor. i love this book for never over-simplifying, for its raw humanity and deep commitment to love. it reminds me of why i love to read; this is everything i look for in a novel: words, stories, blooming like sage across the strange and mystic desert landscape of life itself.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book where the style got in the way of the story. Many have compared this to Cold Mountain which I haven't read. I found it to be like a cut-rate Cormac McCarthy (more All the Pretty Horses than Blood Meridian). I at first found the story to be difficult, then I was intrigued, and now, about 2/3rds of the way through it, I'm bored of it and couldn't care less what happens to any of the characters. To sum it up: bored wife falls for brooding stranger on the Oregon Trail. A lot of the propaganda about the book describe it as 'graceful.' Clunky would be a better word.

[Lisa Pee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books ever. I guess I could understand why people would not like it if you don't like historical novels, but I loved it. So incredibly beautiful and poignant.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Karen Fisher's "A Sudden Country" is one of those novels, like Ron Hansen's "The Assassination of Jesse James" or Raymond Chandler's "Farewell My Lovely" that so transcends the genre to which it might be assigned--in this case historical fiction--that it becomes the stuff of what great literature is made. Fisher's style, her sharp characterizations, her keen replication of dialogue, and her ability to advance a story in ways both subtle and dramatic make this a book well worth one's time.

[Hallie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for book group

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Based on the girlhood journal of her ancestor, Emma Ruth Ross, Karen Fisher recreates her family’s migration from Iowa to Oregon in 1847. Her story focuses on Emma’s mother, Lucy Mitchell, and the mysterious James MacLaren, who joins their party as a driver. This description, while accurate, cannot even begin to describe the many facets of Fisher’s complex western, A Sudden Country. While it is certainly a western, it is not the stereotypical novel of the American West and actually fits with several western subgenres.

Librarians should remember when assisting western readers that “[s]tory lines derive from the entire westward movement in North America, beginning in the early nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth century to the Far West of the United States” not just “the cowboy of the 1865-1890 ranchlands” (Herald 16). A Sudden Country falls into the Wagons West & Early Settlement category (18-9), and typical of this category it presents “the greatest diversity of characters, including women” (18). The stressed farm wife, Lucy Mitchell is part of a trend toward larger roles for women in westerns (28-9), as she is one of two main characters, but the book equally focuses on the long-haired former Hudson Bay Company trader James MacLaren who serves as the “competent, self-reliant, and self-sufficient” hero (16).

Wagons West & Early Settlement stories also give an opportunity for a wide variety of adventures on the trail, with the culmination of the journey in setting up a new home (18). In A Sudden Country, the Mitchell group encounters Indians, experience climate changes as they cross the country, deal with sudden climate changes and disease, and learn a whole new way of life on the trail where there are simply no stores, and the travelers must make due with what they have brought in their wagons or find along the trail. The frankness in dealing with hardships on the trail also identifies this book with The West Unromanticized novels coming into vogue, where none of the gritty details of western life are neglected (31).

However, at least for me, the focus of the book was the short but intense relationship between Lucy and MacLaren. Both have been struggling since the loss of their respective spouses and what starts as a simple diversion from the pain each has been carrying, quickly turns into a full blown relationship, with Lucy seriously considering leaving her family behind to be with MacLaren. While romances tend to play a secondary role in westerns (17), this love story competed with and at timesovershadowed the collected themes associated with traveling west.

While I found the romance exciting and an essential part o fthe bigger story, Clare Davis of the Washington Post felt that was the weakest part of the story and she was much more interested in the realistic depiction of life on the Oregon Trail. While I agree that Fisher portrayed wagon train society accurately and interestingly, I felt that Lucy and MacLaren’s relationship was an integral part, strangely enough, of the grieving process, allowing both to finally put their past spouses behind them and begin to accept the current state of their lives. The intense nature of their relationship also deeply impressed the emotional toll such a trip took on its passengers. Davis also seems to miss how resentful Lucy ahs become toward Isrel Mitchell, her current husband, which is why we're not surprised when seh instantly falls for their mysterious driver. The only compliment Davis can give Fisher’s portrayal of their relationship is that she does not follow the typical romance ending. While a part of me would have preferred to see Lucy and MacLaren ride off into the sunset, I understand that such an ending would not have fit with the realistic tone of the book. Running away with MacLaren may have been easy in the heat of the moment, but Lucy ultimately realizes that she cannot leave her children behind, and in the process learns that once she stops resenting Israel for not being her first husband, he turns out to be a pretty good second husband.

When recommending A Sudden Country to patrons I would not necessarily target teh typical wester reader. While the more traditional wester is almost too easy to read, it took me a few chapters to get comfortable with Fisher’s more abstract style. Even though I grew to love it, I know that some readers prefer a more straight-forward narrative. I would also warn patrons about the fairly graphic sex scenes. The descriptions aren’t quite as explicit as a Sweet And Savage novel, but they would still offend patrons who don’t want to know any of the “mechanics” surrounding sexual encounters.

I would, however, strongly recommend this book. Fisher has tried to be as historically accurate as possible, using not only her ancestor’s journal, but researching the Oregon Trail in 1847 and the party her ancestor’s rode with quite extensively, making this book a learning experience as well. I also found the story complex and very compelling, which doesn't make for an easy read, but instead gave me a lot to think about. For readers not scared of by an intellectually and emotionally stimulating book, or interested in a historically accurate fictionalization of life on the Oregon Trail, this is definitely a book worth checking out.


Sources

Davis, Clare. “Book World.” Washington Post. Reprinted on Amazon.com

Fisher, Karen. A Sudden Country. New York: Random House, 2005.

Herald, Diana Tixier. “Chapter 2: Westerns.” Genreflecting: A Guide to Reading Interests in Genre Fiction, 4th ed. Englewood, Col.: Libraries Unlimited, 1995. (16-38).

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well traveled book in my family, from my aunt in Seattle to my mother and on to me, this novel recounts a much more arduous and life changing journey as it traces a group of settlers taking the long overland trek in covered wagons to new land and perhaps new riches in Oregon from the east coast.

Based very loosely on old family letters, Fisher writes in an alternating first person narrative of a widow, named Lucy Mitchell, now rewed in a stale loveless marriage taking the reluctant trek across country that her husband wants, and a trapper, Mr. McLaren, who was once an employee of the Hudson Bay Company (which incidentally has featured now in two novels that I recently read, and whose financial, policital, and mildly military presence on the frontier I was somehow unaware of). Three days into their journey leaving from St. Louis Lucy and her family experience tragedy when the driver they hired died when a wagon overturned in a storm at which point Mr. McLaren agrees to become their new driver.

Lucy, initially firmly rooted, albeit in a loveless marriage experiences an unsettling of all she knows as she becomes a transient travelling across the country. Previously simple comforts taken for granted become a daily struggle as food and water become scarce. McLaren for his part begins the novel unfounded, floundering on grief from the death of his native american wife and three children from smallpox. McLaren, addicted to laudanum (and to a lesser extent alcohol) grows into a deeper, largely healed, but still reluctant character under the love that Lucy feels for him.

Written in prose that is equal measures short and poetic, Fisher does a thorough job of de-romanticising the at times beaucolic interpretation found in history books and on canvas paintings of what this overland journey was really like. Characters are developed fully and their background stories (particularly McLarens) are spun out with slow measure as deliberately as their wagons cross the plains.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

The constantly switching view point between characters did not seem to add to the book, instead it seemed to hinder and hold back the story. It was an artifice that didn't seem to serve the story.

Also the long delirium scenes during the episode of smallpox and then repeated again with the measles showed me the author was thoroughly exploring the travails of time. It seemed more intended to inflict an understanding of disease upon the reader, then really illustrate the character or the story movement.

The supposedly erotic passion worked when the characters were distanced from each other, but the portrayal of the affair was so carefully g-rated it might almost have been better to follow a classic fade to black and let the reader imagine it.

Boy, I realize I've really thrashed this book. I did read the entire thing. I was interested in her portrayal of history and places, so I hung with it for that. Glimpses into the Hudson Bay Company and race relations on the frontier were really interesting and rather than have all the races be fastidiously separated, she marched right in with exposing frontier ghettos of mixed families, shunned by the whites, more accepted by the natives.

I can't recommend this book unless you have an interest the Oregon Trail. In that case, you might find it interesting.

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the prose of this book. I am not a fan of poetry and flowery writing and this book tested me in that area. I wanted to re-read each line because you just get the sense that the author deliberated about each and every word she used. If I had a pen, I think i would have underlined at least one sentence per page. An intense psychological sketch of two main characters and how they deal with love, grief, dreams and hardship. Set in 1847 during the Oregon trail migration. My pleasure in the book was only heightened when I came to the end and read the author's note, that one of the characters is an ancestor to the author and that the book is loosely based on a letter that her ancestor wrote when she was 11 years old.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

The main thrust of the story was a romantic novel which is not to my liking. There are too many choppy, fragmented sentences which took away from the ability to completely grasp the way passages fit the events. Although there were some interesting descriptions of the country and trials of the immigrants, most were to brief, not detailed, and not used fully in the story thus I would classify this as a romantic rather than historical novel. The ending was good.

[JQ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Seems to me the author was more interested in showing off her wonderful writing style, a style evident only to her. She should have paid more attention to actually telling her story and less to trying to come up with clever ways to write what she passed off as sentences. Don't they use editors anymore?

[Sskous · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd make this 4.5, ok, maybe 5. An excellent book. The characters are deeply drawn ~ I think even the man, whose portrait is causing my husband a little trouble; but he's not finished reading it yet. The woman is complex yet simple. Both are people I'd like to meet and am sorry to have gone from my reading. Fisher brings a seeing and measured eye to the story and to the land. Excellent.

[Lynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Very strong woman character crossing on the Oegon Trail in mid 1800's. Based on Karen Fisher's great great aunt's story.

[Glen Stott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucy eloped with her first love, Luther Ross. They had two daughters and then he died in an accident. Lucy marries Israel mostly out of need. The story begins shortly after she gives birth to her fourth child, a daughter named Mary. That is her second child with Israel; the first was a boy. Israel wants to leave everything they have behind to go by covered wagon on the Oregon trail to Oregon territory. Lucy doesn’t want to go, but as a woman, she has no choice. Israel rarely cares about her feelings.

MacLaren is a mountain man. He moves his wife, Lise, to an isolated cabin. They were once in love, but that has died. She leaves him and the children, three daughters, to go with MacLaren’s friend, Neal Beck. They take the horses with them. The children get small pox and die. MacLaren does everything he can to save them, but he is trapped without horses. After two die, he tries to carry the third one out through deep winter snows, but she dies and he nearly does. After he recovers he begins a search for Neal and his wife.

MacLaren is a traveling man. He finally finds Neal working a driver for Israel’s family on the plains adnd kills him in a fight, without getting an answer about where his wife is. Israel has two wagons. He is not an experienced driver, so he has hired two drivers; one was Neal. MacLaren stays on to replace Neal for a while, but then wanders off.

And so Lucy and MacLaren head west; Lucy in a wagon train; trapped in an unloving marriage; longing for the loving relationship she had with Luther, and thinking she can recapture it with MarLaren. MacLaren mostly wandering – looking for Lise, visiting haunts of his recent life, all the while intersecting with the wagon train off and on, and interacting with Lucy. Ultimately, alone in the mountains, he decides to try to find Lucy. It is a deep look at guilt, repentance, forgiveness, and many shades of love.

Fisher’s description of the trials, tribulations, and surprises of traveling in a covered wagon across prairies and mountains through friendly and hostile Indian tribes was incredible, down to the smallest details. In my opinion, it ended in the only way it could, but I was surprised because usually authors come up with endings different from the what I think I would like.

[Maura Heaphy Dutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, the definition of truly great fiction is a work that makes you see something you thought you knew and understood as if you were really seeing and understanding it for the first time. And, based on that criterion, this is a fabulous, unforgettable novel.

Things that this book is NOT …
• It is not an easy read.
• It is NOT a “cowboy romance.”
• It is not a neatly packaged, respectfully sanitized tale of plucky pioneers.
• It is not “Madame Bovary on the Oregon Trail” …

What it IS, is a fantastic story. Complicated, messy. Disturbing even: Fisher uses a set-up that could, in lesser hands, have been a horrible cliché (cowboy romance, plucky pioneers, even low-budget Madame Bovary) and turns it, instead, into a fabulously written and structured story about the dynamics between complicated people, in a difficult and dangerous situation, and the stories – the lies – that we tell ourselves in order to survive. The versions of those lies that we pass down, in the hope that someone, in a far distant future that we can scarcely imagine, will remember us, and understand us and our sorry little struggles.

A story about stories and how, sometimes, we make them come true.

It is not, as I said an easy read. Fisher has adopted a style that is choppy and poetic, archaic and sometimes shockingly and anachronistically modern, and you have to pay attention, or you can miss minor little things like what the heck is actually happening … It took me a while to get into it and it actually helped that, after reading about 70-odd pages, I had to take an enforced break. When I returned to it, I realized that I could barely remember a thing about the who, what where, etc, and I decided to start again. While I was on hiatus, my brain must have been quietly constructing an algorithm for dealing with Fisher’s prose, because I found that I was immediately immersed in the intertwined stories of James McLaren, tragedy-stricken former trapper with the Hudson Bay Company, grieving father and (possibly) wronged husband, and Lucy Mitchell, one of a family of American Midwesterners on the Oregon Trail -- devoted mother, grieving widow, half-hearted wife, and reluctant pioneer. Fisher’s twisty, complicated prose suddenly seemed like the most effective way – the only way possible of truthfully rendering the thoughts and dialogue of characters who otherwise might seem as distant and alien to me as Martians.

The best analogy I can think of is the style of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which manages simultaneously to convey that these are people who are very much not like us in their attitudes and assumptions, while at the same time being just like us, in everything that really matters, the things that make us all human. That, in my opinion, is high praise – and Fisher richly deserves it.

Fisher developed her novel from a very brief account (it hardly rates the word “journal”) of her ancestors’ 1847 journey from Iowa to Portland, Oregon, written by her teenage great-great+ grandmother. This is incorporated into the narrative, with some other original family documents, at the end of the novel. What I find fascinating is that Fisher’s style, which seems at first sight so “edgy” and modern, has been drawn directly from the slightly stiff, slightly formal and very innocent style of her child ancestor’s barebones account. Emma Rose Ross manages to render a punishing journey of over a year’s duration, which almost resulted in the deaths of herself, her siblings and parents, into two pages that skate over the dramatic episodes, rattle off a list of the names of the families on the trail with them (wonderful, evocative names – “ … Littlejohn … Peabo … Lamphere … Koonse …”), and focuses instead on the tiny details, the magical and frightening moments that a child would notice and remember, the bright memories and the tragic ones all jumbled together. ( On July Fourth, some of the men took pails to a snow field & brought snow to us. We took a cut-off stretch and went no water all day or night and there our nice mare perished and a cow of Mr. Apperson’s … )

Fisher has taken this intriguing, and frustrating account – and spun it into pure gold. The episodes her child-ancestor describes are reworked and reimagined to accommodate the wild card that Fisher has introduced into the story of Emma Rose and her family – James McLaren, who becomes part of their journey like a spirit (malign? Or noble?) of the new land they are travelling through and making their new home.

This is highly recommended, and I can’t wait to read it again one day.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A grand, sweeping epic of a novel that tries to tackle many themes in its 350 pages... The main theme of the novel seems to be the difficulty of reconciling the desire for what is comfortable and familiar with the need to break out and forge new territory. Representing this is the main character Lucy, a twice-married woman and mother, who resents her husband's Israel's spirit of wanderlust and his subsequent uprooting of Lucy's comfortable life and their venture out West. At the same time, she is inexplicably drawn to McLaren, a man who seems to represent the untamable West, but who in actuality is trying to come to terms with the death of his children from smallpox and the desertion of his Native wife, Lise. Lucy finds herself drawn to McLaren, and part of it is due to her increasing resentment of Israel, who for all his big dreams of moving out West is dependent on men like McLaren to safely get them there. Despite McLaren's faults (he is a laudanum addict), you get the sense that he is not the type of man who would risk the lives of his family for his own selfish dreams. This is only one of many themes the novel tackles, but I won't try and describe them all here.

The other fascinating thing about this novel is the language. I have never read a book where the language is so spare and so dense at the same time. On each page are half a dozen (at least) turns of phrase that will have you shaking your head in wonderment. The amount of time and craft that went into the creation of the language of this novel is impressive. Read it for the language alone. Although at times, the fact that language is such an important component, so important that it often trumps story, can be a drawback for some. Still, I would recommend this novel to fans of historical fiction, particularly fans of Western history, Native American fiction and Americana.

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just couldn't like this book. I really wanted to; I like the idea, I like the time period, but it just didn't work for me. The beginning was good, MacLaren's story is quite disjointed and hard to focus on, but still captivating and I really liked Lucy's story. After they meet, however, things went down hill for me. I couldn't get why she was so infatuated with an opium addicted drunkard. She spent all her time thinking about him and wondering what he thought of her and feeling sorry for herself that her husband didn't really love her. I couldn't see how her husband was that awful, true he didn't consider her feelings when he sold their house and decided to head to Oregon, but he wasn't abusive or a drunk, just maybe insensitive. MacLaren spends all his time in a laudanum daze mourning for his wife who ran off and his children who died from smallpox. Very tragic circumstances, I'll give him that, but it got a little old after a while. I got to the middle where MacLaren and Lucy have a roll in the bushes (he's drunk at the time, of course) and couldn't stomach it anymore.

[CindySR · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's about a family, a troubled marriage, and they are going to Oregon. They meet a troubled man who agrees to drive their wagon.

Loved it. Beautiful prose, someone described it as dream like. This story would make a great film or miniseries.

Page 204:

"Something is wrong in me. In what I am."
"Yes, there is. There's something wrong in all of us. People are like stones. Weak and strong, but none without fault. Life gets in and cleaves us, every one. Slow like ice. Quick like fire. Have you not heard some break?"
He had.
She clapped. "Gunshot."
He nodded.
She said, "There's jagged times. Till hurt wears off."

[Brandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far, I love her writing. There have been so many lines I wish I had wrote or wonder if she was reading my mind. The story is good- very early American. I like that. The characters are traveling the Oregon Trail- rugged, dangerous, and hard. Good story.
Finished two days ago and haven't been able to stop thinking about MacLaren and Lucy. I loved the story and the depth of the characters. I could feel their frustration, passion, and desire for something more than themselves. Excellent! This book is a must read!

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is based on a true accounting of life on the Oregon Trail. We get to know the main characters very well and experience "the trail" through their diverse perspectives. It has a little bit of everything in it - romance, adventure, violence, struggle, hardships, and more. I loved this book.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a beautifully written book — full of evocative language and vivid descriptions with a satisfying story line. The characters were well-drawn and set in a believable historical millieu. Fisher pulls you into the world of Lucy Mitchell and James McLaren — ordinary people traveling into unknown worlds and transformed by the experience.

[Autumn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fast paced and beautifully written novel about the west. Captures the strength of the western pioneer.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

It reminds me of a song...I am a man of constant sorrow. I’ve seen troubles...
Very visually appealing, gritty and raw. Filled with sadness from page 1. Still, I liked it.

[Randine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book came out of nowhere and I LOVED it. WOW!

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel about traveling the 1847 Oregon trail.

[Elderberrywine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I spent a year or two as the computer lab teacher at my kid’s school, back in the late 90s, and as thus was quite familiar with Oregon Trail. It, along with Math Blasters and Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego?, was one of the key early educational programs, and I must say, it rocked. No matter how careful you were about picking the right route, and packing some pickles among your provisions (scurvy!), there was always that random element of the unanticipated. Oh, hey, looks like you are ten miles from the Oregon coast of your dreams. Snake bite! You dead. And of course, the boys spent all their funds on bullets so they could shoot stuff. They never made it, and they didn’t much care.

I got the same vibes with this account of a harrowing account of the same journey, but with added grown-up emotions. Lucy Mitchell, remarried widow with three older daughters and two younger children, reluctantly sets off on this pilgrimage at her husband’s urging. Her marriages have been practical ones, but one could do worse. And then, midst journey, she meets James MacLaren, once a trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose beloved indigenous wife of several years has vanished, and whose three children die of smallpox, no matter what he does. So you know where this goes. It was, by the end, a grim desperate slog of a journey, but my favorite bits were the adolescent girls discovering their newfound freedom from convention.

Crossing the river Platte, one of their company’s wagons is in danger of capsizing, and Mrs. Watts went in herself, whooping and splashing in her yards of dress. . . But no one was drowned - not even the crated hens that rolled under not once but twice, and rode to shore still fixed in their crates. They reach shore, the usual army of sheep, goats, dogs, and children; the women around her drifting into accounts of recipes for which none had ingredients any longer, nor would likely in their lives again.