West of Here

by Jonathan Evison

At the foot of the Elwha River, the muddy outpost of Port Bonita is about to boom, fueled by a ragtag band of dizzyingly disparate men and women unified only in their visions of a more prosperous future. A failed accountant by the name of Ethan Thornburgh has just arrived in Port Bonita to reclaim the woman he loves and start a family. Ethan’s obsession with a brighter future impels the damming of the mighty Elwha to harness its power and put Port Bonita on the map.

More than a century later, his great-great grandson, a middle manager at a failing fish- packing plant, is destined to oversee the undoing of that vision, as the great Thornburgh dam is marked for demolition, having blocked the very lifeline that could have sustained the town. West of Here is a grand and playful odyssey, a multilayered saga of destiny and greed, adventure and passion, that chronicles the life of one small town, turning America’s history into myth, and myth into a nation’s shared experience.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Westerns, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Historical, Book Club

486 pages, Hardcover

First published February 7, 2011

About the author

Jonathan Evison is the New York Times Bestselling author of All About Lulu, West of Here, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, This is Your Life, Harriet Chance!, and Lawn Boy.

In his teens, Evison was the founding member and frontman of the Seattle punk band March of Crimes, which included future members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.

Born in San Jose, California, he now lives on an island in Western Washington.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

When it comes to books – strike that. When it comes to life, I am a creature of habit. I get into certain routines (some might call them ruts), find my comfort level, and grow content to stay there. This annoys my wife, because many of my routines involve me wearing sweatpants for an entire weekend. Similar to my sartorial choices, my reading habits often display a lack of breadth and imagination. I simply love history, and so I tend to read books about history. I can read for months entirely ignorant of the fact that there are sentences in this world that have nothing to do with the Crimean War or the short, unhappy presidency of William Henry Harrison.

Fundamentally, I know this is a bad thing. The mind, like a muscle, needs to be challenged; horizons, like the waistband of my sweatpants, need to expand. This mindset has allowed me to get around to reading certain classics of fiction, such as War and Peace and Bleak House and, regrettably, Moby Dick.

Of course, these venerable favorites have left me with a literary blind-spot: contemporary fiction. Since the age of thirteen or so, when I finally stopped buying the newest Tom Clancy hardcover the second it came out, I have woefully lagged behind the cultural zeitgeist. It took me a year after its publication date to get to National Book Award finalist Then We Came to the End and National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin. It took me a decade to finally read The Corrections.

Suffice it to say, people ignore me at the water cooler.

Jonathan Evison’s West of Here broke me out of my rut and helped me stay, fleetingly, ahead of the book-world curve. And what inspired this break in character? I have nine words for you: a high concept plot featuring elements of historical fiction.

Frankly, Evison had me at “historical.”

West of Here takes place in the fictional Washington State town of Port Bonita in two different time periods. The first time period is 1890 and tells the stories of various dreamers, explorers, iconoclasts, mystics, ne’er-do-wells and prostitutes. The second time period is 2006 and tells the stories of the various descendants of these dreamers, explorers, iconoclasts, mystics, ne’er-do-wells and prostitutes.

Plot-wise, the two time periods run in roughly parallel directions, though the end-goal in one is the exact opposite of the end-goal in the other. In 1890, the overarching story is the construction of a dam on the Elwha River that will hopefully provide electricity and prosperity to Port Bonita; in 2006, the overarching story is the removal of the dam on the Elwha River, which has harmed Port Bonita by destroying the salmon population.

There really isn’t a plot, though, at least not in the sense that all the various characters and their actions are moving the story towards a unifying conclusion. Rather, this is an ensemble piece, with dozens of characters separated by 116 years. These characters’ stories are told in short chapters that explore the novel’s themes, chief among them our attempts to move forward in life while chained by the past:

[S]tanding on the divide, with the wind whistling past his ears, Mather could not shake a certain disillusion in knowing that what lay in front of him had already been discovered, had no doubt seen the restless footsteps of other men. Paradise, if it existed, lay somewhere behind them – perhaps they’d trudged right through its midst without recognizing it…

“We can reach the bottom by sundown,” he said. “There, we can camp.”

“Onward,” said Haywood wearily.

This theme is further expounded by a wise old Indian (in fiction, is there any other kind?):

”We are born haunted,” [Lord Jim] said, his voice weak, but still clear. “Haunted by our fathers and mothers and daughters, and by people we don’t remember. We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. And even as our own flame burns brightest, we are haunted by the embers of the first dying fire. But mostly,” said Lord Jim, “we are haunted by ourselves.”

The structure of West of Here is intricate, but should be familiar to anyone who ever watched ABC’s television series LOST. The narrative jumps back and forth between 1890 and 2006; between the hardy pioneers of the past and their shiftless ancestors in the future. At first, the leaps seem random, a bit willy-nilly. But as you read further, you realize that certain characters and scenes are mirror-twins of each other, and that the action in 1890 is informing the action in 2006 (and vice versa). For example, in 2006, a parolee named Tillman sets out along the wilderness path that the 1890 explorer Mather trod in his attempt to find new lands to conquer.

The beginning is a bit slow going, as you are introduced to a wide assortment of characters without any real idea of their place in the firmament. It takes awhile for everyone to introduce themselves; it takes awhile more to remember them in subsequent chapters.

Even as I progressed, I wasn’t enjoying myself. The problem, I think, is that Evison’s human creations initially present less as people than an assortment of quirks. In 1890, for instance, you have an intrepid explorer; a progressive feminist (pregnant, with no husband!); a whore with a heart of gold (a historical fiction requisite); and a Klallam boy who cannot, or will not speak. In 2006, there is an emasculated husband (is there any other kind); a dedicated parole officer; a former high school basketball star obsessed with Sasquatch; and a Klallam boy who cannot, or will not, speak.

Over time, some of these quirky folks gain depth and shading and become characters worth following. I’m thinking especially of Dave Krigstadt, the Sasquatch hunter. His loneliness and brooding sense of failure, which he processes through his Quixotic search for Bigfoot, makes him worthy of headlining his own novel.

Others, though, never rise above their eccentricities. That is the main thing I noticed while reading: how I loved following certain story lines and felt deflated when I followed others. In the case of the Indian characters, I don’t think anything could have salvaged my attention. To me, mystical Indians are just too far embedded in the realm of cliché. Ditto the storyline of the prostitute and her vicious pimp, which felt like a tired imitation of Old West novels of yore.

For the most part, however, the problem isn’t that the storylines are intrinsically bad; rather, a lot of them don’t necessarily have anything to add.

My diagnosis: I think West of Here needed to be half as long or twice as long. That is, some storylines needed to be excised completely or given more space to breath. For instance, there is Hillary, the sexually confused Fish & Wildlife employee, who finds herself a pregnant lesbian by book’s end. I never developed any interest in her plight because she wasn’t given enough pages to make her real. By the time we leave her, she has failed to rise above the peculiarity of her situation. (Lesbian! Pregnant!). Reading Hillary’s chapters was like watching a movie in which the studio has forced the director to remove a half-dozen scenes.

I also got this sensation with two of the main characters in the 1890 section: Ethan Thornburgh and Eva Lambert. When Ethan comes into town, he is eminently likeable: an eternal optimist with a long list of great ideas. It is his destiny to build the dam that will put Port Bonita on the map. However, for a long stretch of the novel, he all but disappears, and when Evison checks back in with him, his personality has abruptly changed and he is transformed into a massive prick. Meanwhile, his lover, Eva (who I found shallow and annoying), who has been Ethan’s foil for hundreds of pages, is unceremoniously shipped away.

My solution: The novel is already pretty long, but I’m always for addition, rather than subtraction. If you have a pretty good 500 page book, you might as well shoot the moon and go for a great 800 pager.

This is among the many reasons that I am not an editor.

Of the two time periods, I thought Evison had a surer grasp on the modern-day. There were times that the 1890 sections felt a bit anachronistic, especially in terms of the dialogue (of course, Larry McMurtry and Deadwood has convinced me that all period dialogue has to be highly-stylized in some form or another). Furthermore, I thought the modern-day character arcs (anchored by Krigstadt, the Sasquatch hunter) paid off better than its 1890s counterpart.

In the end, the novel’s shortcomings did not detract from my overall enjoyment, which was fairly considerable. (Once I got the hang of things, I burned through the book very quickly). After all, West of Here deserves a lot of praise for its audaciousness and ambition and its thematic consistency. Evison juggles a lot of balls and it’s not surprising that some of them drop. Even though certain plotlines aren’t as successful as others, he weaves everything together so well that many of the rough edges are smoothed over quite nicely. The resulting mosaic proves an effective way to discuss the novel’s big ideas.

It helps considerably that Evison is a very good writer. Specifically, he has a real talent for nature writing. Evison is at his best evoking the beauty, grandeur and potential terrors of the wilderness. The scenes of Mather’s Expedition on the Olympic Peninsula are fabulously tactile, to the point where you can feel the insidious chill seeping into your bones.

West of Here is studded with wit, humor, and bursts of magical realism. Ultimately, though, it is defined by its poignancy. In its title, in the yearnings of its characters, it taps into something essential in humanity: the belief in something better over the next horizon; the hope that no matter how much time has passed, we still have it within ourselves to change; and the knowledge that even though we can’t run away from our ghosts, we can run away.

[Andy Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

This disappointing novel is set in fictional Port Bonita Washington, a thinly disguised Port Angeles. It alternates between 1890 and 2006. There were some interesting characters and story lines from the 1890 portion but the transitions to 2006 were jolting and the modern characters were so unsympathetic I found myself looking forward to the return to the 1890 storyline which unfortunately unraveled.

The book of course ties characters from the two eras. One tie involves a mute native american boy from 1890 and a native american high school student in 2006 who is alienated from his school and family and eventually slips into a coma. The two characters are connected in spirit, and provide the low point of the novel when the 1890 boy mumbles the letters K, F, C in a shaman type of speech(yes, a speech that overcomes his muteness) and his tied to the 2006 boy in his post coma talk as he passes a KFC restruant--yes, that KFC restruant, and mutters the letters KFC

While there is some interesting history of Port Angeles and nice description of the surrounding Olympics and hiking trails, I would not recommend this book to anyone

[William Ramsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a flawed novel from a very good writer. I have trouble understanding what he was getting at in writing it. It's sort of a history of a place called Port Bonita in the far northwest corner of the US. Part of the story takes place in 1889/90. The rest takes place in 2006. The story isn't told as a normal progression - rather, he jumps between the two periods, telling fragments of stories at each jump. The stories involve a large cast of characters. The major flaw with this method of storytelling is that you never really have time to fully engage with the characters. And it's not always clear what one set of characters have to do with another. There is only one character in the modern part who can claim to be a direct descendant of a major character from the earlier part. The stories from all the different times and people are usually interesting, which leads me to think that this would have been a much better project if the author had written it as a series of connected short stories. In that case WE would have managed the connections and not had to struggle with figuring out what the author's connections were. Well written, but confusing.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

In March 2012, the final pieces of concrete and steel of the Elwha River Dam were removed. For one hundred years, man tried to harness the power of this river that flows through the haunting green and glacial interior of the Olympic Peninsula. Before it was dammed (damned), it hosted annual runs of fish, which numbered in the millions - sockeye, Coho, Chinook, cutthroat trout, steelhead, char, among many; it gave life to black bear, cougar, madrona and red cedar. It flowed through the ancestral home of the Klallam people. Removal of the Elwha Dam last year and the Glines Dam this summer mean the renewal and restoration of one of America’s most priceless national treasures: the Olympic National Park.

But at the time Washington was granted statehood (1889), the western Olympic Peninsula – crowded with sharp peaks like a mouth with too many teeth and a vast rain forest where ferns and fungi grow to fairy tale proportions – was the last frontier of the American West. Its natural resources were too great not to be consumed by the appetites of entrepreneurs. And so the flow of progress stopped the flow of the Elwha. For eight decades, its power was channeled to fuel the grind and stench of the Port Angeles paper mill and the mammoth timber industry that reigned over the western-most reaches of the United States.

Jonathan Evison’s messy and beautiful West of Here was published in 2011 just as the Elwha Dam removal project got underway. It is situated in Port Bonita, a thinly-disguised Port Angeles, in the early days of its modern development (circa 1890) and the end days of its reliance on the Elwha for it economy (2006). His cast of characters is large and they are but appendages to the beating heart of the novel’s central character: the Olympic Peninsula.

As a reader and writer for whom “Place” is core to my intellectual and emotional orientation, I have a tender spot for stories which ground themselves so firmly into their setting. Evison does this to spectacular effect – giving the same profound sense of place as Ivan Doig’s Montana, Edna O’Brien’s Ireland, Mark Helprin’s New York City (full disclosure: I grew up in Sequim, fifteen miles east of “Port Bonita” and I now reside on the eastern edge of the Olympic Peninsula. This land is in my blood).

This is not clean and tidy historical fiction that follows the strictures of fact. Evison himself states in the author notes “I set out to write…not a historical novel but a mythical novel about history.” He anchors the plot in fact – basing James Mather’s quixotic winter expedition to plot a route across the Olympic Mountains to the Pacific Ocean on James Christie’s Press Expedition of 1888-1889; nearly all place names are real; snippets of Washington state history – Seattle’s great fire of 1889 and Port Townsend’s subsequent quest to become Washington’s most important city (which failed, thank goodness – I love my beautiful, peaceful small town, where those homes and edifices built in its Victorian heyday still offer as much wonder as they do shelter). The novel’s backbone is this region’s history and it reveals Evison’s extensive research.

Evison presents many themes: the degradation to environment and indigenous peoples by the mindless pursuit of progress and development; the burgeoning women’s movement of the late nineteenth century; tribal politics and the plight of Native Americans who stumble between a lost past and an uncertain future; post-partum-depression; the throwaway life of the modern American. Evison has been criticized for presenting this jumble of themes without following them all to their conclusion. I counter by asking when in life do we really have closure? How often are we able to tidy up our moral dilemmas, our own pasts, and march on, certain of our path? Umm…never? Right. Not even with the hindsight of history do we ever achieve certainty.

Greater than his themes, in terms of quantity and quality, are Evison’s characters: we live 1890’s Port Bonita through the adventures of feminist Eva, explorer Mather, entrepreneurs Ethan and Jacob, civil servant Adam, prostitute Gertie, healer Haw, and Klallam mother Hoko and her troubled son Thomas; Port Bonita of 2006 offers up aging high school athlete and Sasquatch hunter Krig and his hapless boss Jared; Franklin, one of the Peninsula’s few black men; ex-con Tillman; Forest Service Hillary; healer Lew; Klallam mother Rita and her troubled son Curtis. And those are just the characters I can remember as I type. But each is rendered with affection – an affection I find striking, because not all these characters are sympathetic. Fairness and empathy are this writer’s imprimatur, I believe.

The cast of characters and the shifting progression of the plot in West of Here– from one era and storyline to the next and back again – made me think of hanging wet clothes on our backyard laundry rack in New Zealand, where the wind blew ceaselessly. I’d bend down to pull out the next shirt or bath towel and the rack would whip around, presenting me with an empty line or an already-crowded patch. But I stayed in place and kept hanging, knowing in the end it would all get sorted.

I faltered a bit mid-way through (and don’t let the 486 pages of text daunt you. Evison’s prose nips at your heels – forward motion is easy) because of the bleakness of modern-day Port Bonita. I remember the Port Angeles of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, when the timber and paper industries stalled. In contrast to my rain-shadowed, blue-skied Sequim flush with retiree and dairy cash, Port Angeles was a gray and lifeless place. Heavy with damp lichen and lost dreams, it wasn’t a place to linger. Evison’s reimaging of Port Bonita twenty years later brought back that sense of listlessness.

But just when you think these lives are going nowhere, the author tosses you a laugh-aloud lifeline and a tenderness that promises redemption.

Rather than comparison to today’s Lit It Boys and Girls - the other Jonathans (Franzen, Safran-Foer) Dan Chaon, Zadie Smith - whose works have left me out in the cold, I hope I have found a writer with more classic sensibilities and a deeper appreciation for storytelling. I’ll keep reading Jonathan Evison to find out.

In the meantime, follow with me the progression of life returning to the Elwha. Return of the River

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up an ARC of West of Here at this year's BEA and I am glad I got a chance to read it as early as I did. This book is a sweeping epic, it's as if Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion and Eugenides' Middlesex had a love child. While reading you can actually feel the Olympic Peninsula all around you just as you could feel Oregon's coastal forests in Kesey's great book.

West of Here is like a freight train, it starts off at a steady pace allowing you to become familiar with its broad cast of characters. The novel continues to building speed and you realize that this freight train's brakes have failed; there is no stopping until you go crashing through to the end.

Evison has definitely outdone himself with his second book. All About Lulu was an excellent debut but compared to West of Here you can see just how much Evison has matured, and how much he is capable of.

One final question: Is it too early to get an ARC of his third book?

[Jason Pettus · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

As regular readers know, I only give out perfect tens at CCLaP an average of two or three times a year, and the title has to pass a highly exacting list of criteria to earn it: among other requirements, it must of course be impeccably written, find a great mix between plot and character development, surprise the reader in its greatness relative to the author's existing reputation, and by the end ultimately tell a grander story than what its mere plotline hints at, a not only literal but metaphorical tale that can strongly stand on its own through at least another generation of readers if not a lot more. And ladies and gentlemen, I've found the latest, Jonathan Evison's epic new West of Here, a legitimate saga (but only in the way that TC Boyle's books are sagas too) that spans over a hundred years in the history of a small Pacific Northwest town. And that's ironic and great, because as longtime readers remember, when I reviewed Evison's previous book, the slight coming-of-age tale All About Lulu from the now-defunct Soft Skull Press, the biggest complaint I had was that although the writing itself was just fine, I wished Evison had picked something much grander to talk about, ironically stated right as he was undoubtedly just finishing up this newest saga.

And an epic saga it is, no way to deny it; like I said, spanning two timelines from the 1890s and early 2000s, it tells the dual story of the founding and downfall of the tiny yet earnest Washington village of Port Bonita, filled at its outset with men of large visions who wished to turn the place into the next Seattle, but by a century later a crumbling small town full of bumbling trash, people who share their ancestors' last names but almost nothing else. Or is that actually correct? Because although the storylines are quite different, you could maybe argue that what all these characters have in common is a certain yearning about the world, a certain hunger for accomplishing more than they have, along with a largely shared inability to actually achieve these dreams, making it in toto a work about hope, loss and what comes after, no matter which time period you're talking about.

That's really the main pleasure of the book, is to flip back and forth between the two milieus, and contrast the way that the similar problems between centuries manifest themselves in different ways -- from the land grabs and harsh frontier lifestyles of the 1890s, right before the area is finally about to pass into statehood, to the blue-collar jobs and hillbilly existences of the 21st century, when the massive dam that became the defining element of the region (which the 1890s people are there to build) is finally scheduled for demolition, it long ago killing off the local fish population and thus most of the local industry that had made the area such a lovely place in the 1920s and '30s, when business was at its most booming. And admirably, Evison doesn't skimp on the historical research such a story requires; whether we're strolling down a frontier main street or hiking to Mount Olympus, he does an impressive job of actually placing us at that specific time and setting, making a full half of this a piece of legitimate and very successful historical fiction.

But like I said, it's with his characters that Evison really shines, and it's no coincidence that I mentioned TC Boyle earlier; because this is a very Boylean kind of story, full of quirky yet complex characters who run a full gamut of emotions and motivations, telling ironically a grand epic through a series of scenes that often can only be described as goofy: there's the Napoleonic black parole officer, for example, who chugs a gallon of eggnog a day even in the middle of summer; the proto-feminist and single mother who in the 1890s treks out to Port Bonita by herself with child in tow, to live in a miserably mismanaged liberal utopian community and become an investigative journalist in a region with no scandals; and not to mention the dual bored, insolent yet brilliant Native American teenage boys, one from each time period, who somehow manage to magically swap souls for a moment so to simultaneously see their 19th-century camp and the 21st-century Wal-Mart that's replaced it, one of several out-and-out fantastical moments in this sprawling, hard-to-classify novel.

It's a whopper of a story, even more unexpected by his last novel being so twentysomething pedestrian, and I expect that it's going to vault Evison in many people's eyes into a whole new literary category he wasn't in before, one where people at more impressive publications than mine start talking about him in the same breath as Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen. It's for all these reasons that today it becomes the first book so far of 2011 to get a perfect ten here at CCLaP, and why I encourage you to check out a copy whenever you have a chance.

Out of 10: 10

[Jake Ratliff · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Nooooooooo!"
~ Ethan Thornburgh

In West of Here, a cavalcade of two-dimensional, often cartoonish, characters spin their wheels for 500-odd pages.

While the nature descriptions were sometimes good, the author's descriptions of his characters were often so odd as to be unintelligible. Tell me how someone, barring some rare medical condition, can have "pointed blue eyes."

The worst quote from the book, however, comes when Ethan finds his baby daughter, Minerva, drowned in the Elwah River.. It is supposed to be an incredibly sad moment, but Ethan's reaction was so hackneyed as to neutralize any sympathy for his character. He simply yells, "Noooooooo!" The chapter ends right there, and the emotion of the event is given no further treatment.

I know it is difficult, but a good writer should at least try to convey the darkest emotions of his central characters instead of simply tapping the "o" key a few extra times. You might as well use an emoticon to express the grief of your characters. Something like, I dunno, this :'(

But this small example is indicative of the larger problems with the book. The characters - of which there are many - are not given room to fully develop. Krig comes closest to a fully developed character, so I'm glad the author chose to give him more air time towards the end of the novel.

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a novel about conquering the frontier, West of Here is refreshingly free of frontier wisdom. In fact it's also wonderfully free of platitudes of any kind, which is incredibly rare in a novel of it's scope.

As someone familiar with the area in which the story takes place, I was impressed by how well Evison captured the landscape, and also how he captured the general mood of contemporary small town Washington state.

The stories in the book are entertaining, compelling, and compassionate. Aside from a few drunken injuns, there are no cardboard caricatures here, each personality is very much it's own, and I found myself empathizing with just about all of them.

It wasn't suspensful or stressful, but that the story kept me turning pages.

[Neil McCrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of this book from the author back in August. It was quickly read and has often been on my mind since then. West of Here has defied my ability to review it, and not just because the author is a friend.

The Pacific Northwest has been home to both sides of my family for many generations, and both sides have had a deep passion for genealogy and local history. McCreas and McKinneys came over from Scotland and helped found towns from Couer d'Alene, Idaho to Klamath Falls, Oregon to Port Angeles, Washington. They include in their number fishermen and lumberjacks as well as pioneer women who were lawyers and college professors. Evison's novel takes place primarily in Port Bonita, WA, a fictionalized Port Angeles. It bounces back and forth between the 19th and 21st centuries. The 19th century part of the novel could be the story of my grandparents and great-grandparents, the 21st century part could be the story of my employees, employers, and drinking cronies. Writing a review for this book feels a little like writing a critique on my right arm, what can be said about something that is so much a part of me? Jonathan gets it right.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

i've been thinking about reading and what makes it special. i love it most of all because of i love words, and taking them in, and how they're arranged because they speak to me very clearly when i take them in through my eyes. i absorb them and they speak through the writer into my own experience, and desire, my fear, and my hope.

in west of here, jonathan evison tells many stories, woven together to comprise a town in tapestry, not limited to one set of people, or time. it is an ambitious book full of place and change, and memory, and i found i felt most captivated there in the past, with the mather party, its humans and animals -- oh lord, the animals. this man can write animals! this story of adventure, of men seeking a way through unknown woods, at first full of confidence, like children, and then increasingly frustrated as obstacle after obstacle overcomes their party resonated most for me, and it is my dear wish that the author would take some of his considerable talent and use it to create a series of adventure stories, for his son, and for me, and for all the others who would follow him through the woods any day of the week. :)

[Ron Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warning: Don’t try to enjoy “West of Here” in snippets before bed. If you can’t read all 500 pages in one marathon sitting, at least keep a list of the characters as they appear, or you’ll get lost in the throng of Jonathan Evison’s voracious story. It’s 1889, when the Washington Territory — the last frontier — has been admitted to the Union. Into this rain-drenched wilderness, Evison introduces a town’s worth of daring folk who dream and plot and clash as they carve lives in the “uncharted interior of the Olympic Peninsula.” Surrounded by Shaker Indians, feminist Utopians, prophetic children, intrepid explorers, violent barkeepers, gold-hearted prostitutes and visionary dam builders, Evison puts his vertiginous camera on a tripod and gives it a good, swift spin.

Hold on tight because soon these short chapters are jumping back and forth to 2006 to follow the modern-day descendants of those original settlers — with a Bigfoot cameo to boot! The result is fun, if dizzying: an American epic clutching an unfilled prescription for Ritalin.

With so much overflowing in these pages, it’s fitting that a stupendous dam sits in the center of this sprawling story. Ethan Thornburgh, a failed accountant from Chicago, arrives in the fictional town of Port Bonita just as Washington becomes a state. It’s a community so remote that it prints its own money, but Ethan is “going to civilize this place.” Full of great ideas (“the electric stairs, the electric pencil sharpener, the magnetic coat hanger”), he sees the Elwha River as the ideal fuel for a hydroelectric plant that will propel the whole region into the future. That’s an audacious plan for a penniless man with no connections — his pregnant lover thinks he has “the common sense of a puppy” — but irrepressible Ethan sees “flashes of a life yet to be lived, a bounty to be plucked out of the wilderness for the taking. . . . He sincerely believes: in progress, in destiny, in his own place in history.” And before you know it, the force of his boundless optimism plugs up a mighty river, harnesses millions of kilowatts and powers an economic revolution.

While all that (and more) plays out in the 1890s, alternating scenes whisk us to the depressed Port Bonita of 2006. The old Thornburgh Dam is about to be dismantled in a last-ditch effort of river restoration. With the salmon fished to the edge of extinction, only one processing plant remains, managed by a pale descendant of the legendary Ethan. All that chest-beating, manifest-destiny bravado looks like a cheat 120 years later. The economic boom Ethan sparked turned out to be a consumptive fire, and the social progress the Utopians hoped to set in motion now seems just as quixotic: The town is still almost entirely white; the Indians still live stunted, separate lives; and ambitious women who don’t marry still endure slurs about their sexuality.

Evison sets up evocative parallels between the characters in these two time frames that demonstrate the poignant diminution of the American spirit. The great dreamers of the late-19th century have given way to people of narrowly circumscribed hopes, trapped in a dead-end small town. The men and women who once boldly imagined how they might reroute rivers and transform human relations have been supplanted by people who imagine how they might spend Saturday night on a bar stool.

And yet for all the Wild West scheming of those 1890s scenes, the novel’s modern-day action offers its own special charm, largely because Evison is such an energetic storyteller who spools out a roster of quirky characters. Denied the awesome potential of an untamed world, his middle managers, factory workers and ex-cons are forced to explore a more interior realm than their errant ancestors. A parole officer, one of the town’s few black men, tries to inspire his charges to imagine a better future; a salmon worker pursues the forest’s mythical creatures; and a young woman searches for the strength to admit she’s a lesbian. All these tales play out in Evison’s brisk, often comic, always deeply sympathetic narrative about how modern, ordinary people still manage “the sort of reckless heroism that could drive a man to extraordinary acts.”

Evison keeps all the strands of this novel winding along — a feat of narrative acrobatics that’s sometimes more dazzling than comprehensible. But tending to all those spinning subplots can lead to some aggravating shortcuts. So many characters and stories are crammed into this novel that they suffer from a degree of oxygen deficiency, which can make for lightheaded fun — or give you a headache. Ethan Thornburgh, for instance, is wonderfully introduced, but since there isn’t space to follow his progress, he’s subjected to several clunky personality shifts and then dropped. Other fascinating characters, such as his feminist lover, are merely shipped back East. One mystical Indian would be too many, but we get two, with a touch of spooky time-travel that interrupts the novel’s realism for reasons that remain only vaguely developed.

The Utopian community of old Port Bonita is sketched so lightly that it barely leaves a watermark on these pages. And the dam itself, an earth-moving project of awesome power and risky engineering, is, alas, described mostly in dispatches from offstage. Evison is reaching for a Tom Wolfe-like grasp of this place, but much of it runs through his fingers. Trying to articulate so many themes — feminism, Indian integration, gay rights, environmental destruction, disability awareness, native spirituality, penal reform, manifest destiny — the novel almost begins to blur as it rushes onward.

God help me for saying this, but I could have used twice as many pages to give all these stories room to breathe. And Evison is such an endearing, unpretentiously entertaining writer that I would have stayed up late to read every one.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...

[Christopher Swann · Rating 5 out of 5]

West of Here sticks with you for a while. That might not seem odd, given the size of the novel (nearly 500 pages). But it doesn't read like a big novel, not in the sense that you have to wade through several hundred pages. It certainly feels like a big novel, and how could it not? Two timelines a century apart, multiple characters, multiple plots and subplots including a wilderness expedition, building (and later un-building) a dam, a parole officer searching for his newest parolee, doomed romances, troubled parenting, madness, and Bigfoot.

What stands out about this novel is that—while it is certainly making a splash, and deservedly so—it does not stand out or call undue attention to itself. It does not show off linguistically with archaic words like “granitic” or “discalced” or “isocline.” It does not have a boy wizard or an autistic child or a serial killer or a dog as a protagonist or narrator.

What West of Here does have is a hell of a story, a sweeping, epic tale of a community and the wilderness around it, both at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. And characters. Does it have characters. These are people who are as unique, and odd, and funny, and irritating, and fascinating as the people in your neighborhood. In this sense, it is old-fashioned: characters + plot = story. No more. No less.

And at the end of this novel, I was sad to say goodbye to all of these compelling, maddening, glorious people: Krig, Mather, Ethan, Eva, Hillary, Franklin, Timmon, Curtis, Adam, Rita, Thomas, et cetera. Their trials, failures, and victories seemed to become my own as I read on. And I didn’t want them to end.

In Huckleberry Finn, Huck turns his back on civilization and lights out for the territory. West of Here embodies a similar hearkening for something better, something beyond, something just west of here. In this, it is a quintessentially American novel, and a very fine one indeed.

[Katrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jonathan Evison’s “West of Here” is a gritty, full bodied epic set in the fictional town of Port Bonita, Washington. The beginning pulls the reader in with beautiful, assured narration and indelible characters who embody the spirit of the pioneers who ventured west in search of opportunity. These are men who set out to move the course of a river, who imagined selling ice gathered at mountain tops, who envisaged electric stairs, and who dreamed they could save the culture of a people. These are women who believed their voices and actions were valuable; for one woman that meant to send her child away to a better life, for another, to break out of a destructive pattern, and for another, to attempt to stop big-money progress with the power of the written word.

A few chapters in, Evison introduces a whole new set of characters as he travels forward in time to the lives of the descendants of the men and women who settled Port Bonita. The transition comes as a surprise but as the reader comes to know these new characters he won’t mind being ripped from the earlier group. Connecting the two time periods are the Elwha river, the men who tried to tame it and their descendants, the Native American settlement of Jamestown, and an odd shaman-like out-of-body experience in which the Native American boy, Thomas, switches places with a modern day Khallam Indian, Curtis.

The themes are familiar: man versus nature, Native American wisdom versus progress, the tangible versus the mysterious, but Evison’s quality of writing and depth of character take these themes to an enviably high level. By the end, the reader realizes the author has threaded these two disparate sets of characters seamlessly to offer a rich, multi-layered novel that satisfies.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

The more I think about the low points of this novel the more I realize how much I truly disliked it. I really, really wanted to like it, and I started out thinking these were great characters and that this story was going to be big on a grand scale....then the 1800s chapters came to an abrupt end, I was thrown into the present with a bunch of pitiful, desperate humans I didn't care much for and all I wanted to do was skip ahead and get back to what was happening with the folks I did care about. I don't want to give a total spoiler review here, but let's just say that I went on to be disappointed not only by the way the female characters I had invested most in were casually tossed aside by Evison, but also by the hokey past/present "link" between Thomas and Curtis (really, it was so awful that I was constantly rolling my eyes) and the incessant Big Foot jabber, not to mention the pointlessness of Mather's entire wilderness/mountain adventure! The worst part is that this story had the potential to be an epic tale of survival, conquest and redemption but instead turned out to be a shallow, overly-hyped tale....poorly edited and probably hastily published. Sadly, I couldn't help but skim-read the last 200 or so pages and I still didn't feel as though I missed a thing.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the first page to the last, I was there. Jonathan's voice took me on a hike through the Washington wilderness along snowy mountain peaks in the dead of winter in the 1890's and I drove past a Taco Bell and Walmart in 2006 in a Monte Carlo sitting next to Rita. I still feel the cold and smell of Merit second-hand smoke.

The structure of this book was thoughtfully and brilliantly created. Jumping from the 1890's to 2006 was not as harsh or distracting as I first thought it might be... especially considering the short chapters and frequent time shifts. The parallel story lines comfortably held hands, fingers interlaced perfectly.

It is a story of seeing nature as a product, a resource, a tool of progress and the consequences of altering this natural resource in order to grow a community. It is also a story about the spirit of people and how through the years that spirit does not change. We move on, persevere, and adapt to our surroundings.

West of Here tells me that Jonathan Evison's time is here... there's a new American writer to keep an eye on. Can't wait for his third book.

[Joanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best thing about West of Here is that the book itself is a big idea. And it's nicely atmospheric, the majesty of the Pacific Northwest comes across more clearly than any of the thirty-odd characters that populate its pages.

But despite the reviews making free use of words like 'sweeping' and 'epic,' to describe it, this book is neither. It is merely long, with much of that length in the vastly overwritten sectional chapters. I would propose that, when your book is weighing in at 486 pages, and you have a vast array of adult human characters busy as ants at advancing the plot - you really needn't include any writing at all from the perspective of a tiny infant, or (yes, really) the Mather party mule.

A writer, or editor (is there an editor in the house?!), could also have opted to reduce the references to optimism and switchbacking by half. Or, indeed, noticed any of the other exceedingly repetitive turns of phrase that keep the read hovering on the brink of tediousness at all times. On page 251: "...Timmon felt the cold reality of death lurking somewhere beneath his skin." On page 263: "...Timmon knew, despite the cold reality of death lurking in his bones..." What, are we all out of fresh adjectives and verbs, only just past the half way point of the novel?

It is truly a shame that so much space is wasted on things like that, because otherwise the reader does get a sense that West of Here aspires to be a good novel, and if it spent that time on further developing its extant characters and character arcs, it might not fall far short.

But the book is what it is. It does not cover a hundred years of the history of fictional Port Bonita - it covers two years: November 1889 - October 1890 and June - September of 2006. It feels longer, granted, but it's not. And as such, not enough time is given to the characters to fully develop. This is partially due to the structure of the narrative, which can beat even the Mather party for the number of switchbacks, but which never weaves itself together as a cohesive whole. It feels like each section is stacked on top of the one that came before, in the manner of awkwardly balanced blocks, as opposed to building or feeding or connecting one to the next. It does not flow, so much as it clunks.

There are also instances where far too many pages fall between one appearance of a familiar character and his eventual return. I had to keep reminding myself of who Adam was every time we switched back over to his part of the story. And, in the tradition of novels with a cast of thousands, too many characters have their arcs dropped completely, or the characters themselves exit stage right when there is still more than a quarter of the book left to go.

This book could have been so much more readable (and enjoyable!) with a tightened focus on some of the more interesting characters and plots. The autistic Indian boy who is thought to walk in two worlds was terrific, until they tied him in with the acid tripping comics reading modern teen. Jarringly pointless. And wrapping up the whole novel with a post-move letter from Krig feels like Evison just opted to tag a big PS at the end of an already supremely long story.

Like the residents of Port Bonita, you have to be an optimist to keep reading this book, in continual hope that it will pick up or get better. Unfortunately, this hope just does not pan out.

[Kerry Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to score an ARC of Jonathan Evison’s West of Here and I have to admit that it surprised me. I knew the man could write, his first novel All About Lulu was a lovely coming of age story told with a unique voice that I liked a lot. But Lulu in no way prepared me for the staggering scope of West of Here.

Set in the fictional town of Port Bonita, Washington, the book follows two timelines. The first timeline begins in 1889 and focuses on Port Bonita's founding and the damming of the Elwha River which gave the town its identity and life. This timeline is filled with men and women of vision and purpose, the world wide open to them if only they can make the right decisions. The second timeline is in the modern year 2006 and follows the descendants of those original founders. But for them, Port Bonita is no longer thriving, the dam no longer their salvation but their downfall. These men and women would like to have the same sense of purpose their ancestors did, but first they must somehow reconcile their past with their future. It might be time for Port Bonita and its inhabitants to make a change.

Jonathan Evison writes colorfully with a lot of humor and genuine affection for his many characters – not one written with anything less than absolute vibrancy and depth. The Washington wilderness itself is a character and his descriptions of it are so effortless and beautiful, you trust that he KNOWS this landscape. He makes you feel it.

The story itself is propulsive. At the beginning you will slowly begin to know the characters and follow them on their paths, learning more and more about them as you turn the pages, then the plot will start to take a strong hold and pretty soon you will be unable to put the book down until you find out what everyone’s destinies will be, until you are finished with the book and sad that it’s over.

I am intrigued by the amount of research that went into the writing of this novel. What is factual and what is imagination? I want to look into the history of the area myself and learn everything I can about it. It’s that pioneer spirit and sense of adventure that captures my attention and imbues in me a childlike sense of wonder at the vastness of things.

So, thanks to Jonathan Evison for writing such a spectacular book. I think this novel is going to be big for him. I’ll definitely be buying at least one copy when it is officially released and I encourage you to do so too.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Port Bonita is not a place, but a spirit, an essence, a pulse; a future still unfolding.... Onward! There is a future, and it begins right now."

This is a quote from the last few pages of the book, but it's truly the essence of the book as well. Evison has referred to this book as his "little opus" with some humor--this is a chunky book. But it covers 126 years (1880-2006) and is told in 42 voices (I didn't count them--he did), so what else could he do? What is interesting is that the only true character is the place: Port Bonita and the Olympic Mountains and the river that runs through them. The people are the temporary and every changing scenery to the life of this place.

Don't get me wrong--there is plenty of "people plot" to the book--we learn the stories of everyone from daring explorers to whores to preachers to parole violators to high school jocks gone to seed. Everyone is trying to find their way in some manner--to a better life, a grand discovery, to fame, to love, to freedom, to a shiny future of some sort even if they don't know how to articulate that or even really know what it is that they are looking for. But whatever they are searching for, the spirit of the place infuses and inspires them--there is a bit of mysticism to the story both blatant and subtle.

The book is written with all the considerable passion Evison has about the real place that he has fictionalized for this book. That truly is what makes this book the memorable tome that it is. It is an opus indeed. Well done, maestro!

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was blown away by Jonathan Evison's first novel, All About Lulu and have been eagerly awaiting this new one. While it is a long stretch from a coming of age story to historical fiction, the aspects of Evison's writing that so impressed me are still present in West of Here, expanded and honed even further.

West of Here is a mashup of historical novel and contemporary angst set in the Olympic Peninsula just southwest of Seattle, WA. In November, 1889, James Mather sets out to conquer the last frontier of the Washington Territory. He is a 34-year-old Arctic explorer and Indian fighter with an addiction to danger and a compulsion to be the first explorer in any virgin land he enters. It will be the worst winter in the recorded history of Washington.

Other characters from the 1890s include Miss Eva Lambert, a feisty feminist from Chicago, who lives in a utopian community on the peninsula, determined to make her way as a journalist. Ethan Thornburgh, the father of Eva's unborn child, has followed Eva from Chicago, desperate to marry her and to prove to his wealthy father that he is not a loser. He will become famous for building a dam on the main river and bringing electricity to the frontier town of Port Bonita.

Meanwhile, the Klallam Indian tribe suffers the depredations of the white man, losing their lands and falling under the influence of alcohol. The local tavern proprietor provides the alcohol, his chief whore Gertie befriends Eva and a lowly census taker attempts to bring justice to the natives.

A wealth of characters, incident, and intrigue make for a somewhat confusing read at first. To complicate matters further, Evison begins to interweave events from 2006 with characters who turn out to be descendants of the folks from 1890. The reader is required to be something of an explorer as well, with little help from the author, making her own discoveries as she reads. I was thoroughly lost at times, having to check back, comparing dates and names and locations, and trying to decipher the map provided. I even got out my road atlas and studied the Olympic Peninsula, of which I had been previously unaware.

This lost in the wilderness feeling will probably upset some readers and is a big authorial risk, but Evison pulls it off. His writing is robust but terse. He gets right to the kernels of basic personality in each character but adds layers of complexity that bring each person alive. Suddenly I became sympathetic to them all and lived their lives with them. The frontier life, the challenges of weather and wilderness, the tackiness of a modern dying town, all stand out in broad strokes of description with just enough detail.

What I like best about Evison's writing is a dry humor that reminds me of T C Boyle and Michael Chabon. This is historical fiction written in a completely fresh and contemporary style; an approach that ties the present realities of our great but truthfully young country to attributes of our pioneer days. It speaks of consequences without moralizing.

I happened to visit Seattle a week after finishing West of Here. I kept glimpsing the deeper layer of the past through the forests, the industrial parks, and the gentrified neighborhoods. Jonathan Evison did that to me.

[Carl R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

West of Here as a concept has a great deal going for it. Jonathan Evison’s cast is superb, the setting (Olympic Peninsula) rife with possibilities--landscape, weather, history. The events of the book center around the building of a dam (1890), then tearing it down 120 years later. We bounce back and forth between 1890 and 2006 and between a host of interesting people. Nearly every 1890 character and event has a 2006 parallel, and an aura mystery and magic surrounds the story in the persons
of Sasquatch and a time-traveling acid freak who seems to more than commune with his epileptic 19th century counterpart. A great formula with some astounding and moving moments and some terrific writing. Verdant soil for some potent historical fiction, which is, of course, my thing.

However, in the end the effect for me was unsatisfying. Maybe it was that, like A Visit From the Goon Squad (WW 10/4/11), there are simply too many characters, and one can’t spend enough time with any of them to get emotionally invested. Or perhaps it’s the precise matching of the worlds of 1890 and 2006. It’s so neat, it’s almost mathematical. Until recently I might have called it “contrived,” but a friend quoted Janet Burroway as saying that if a story appears contrived, it means it’s not contrived enough. Nicely put.

So I guess I have to give West of Here lots of high and low marks and average them out, the final test being how I feel about it when I put the book on the shelf (or in this case, turn off the iPad) and walk away. Let’s say somewhere around B-/C+. Based on all the high-mark moments, I am interested in Evison’s prize-winning first book, All About Lulu. We’ll see how that turns out.

[Jean · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't waste your time with this book; I would give it less than one star if I could. I started it and put it down within the first 15 pages. The story is about several generations of people in Port Bonita, Washington. I usually love this kind of novel, but not this one. I can't believe Stephen King and others rated it so highly. It is very poorly written. It is full of cliche's and obvious idioms and figures of speech; it shows a poor writer if he can't come up with less obvious phrasing. I also can't believe the publisher let this one get past its editorial review.

Examples of thoughtless writing: "a sheer wall of basalt" "a wall of hyperborean wind" "vast uncharted interior of the Olympic Peninsula"
and my particular favorite "the child, lithe and moonfaced, squinted fiercely with pointed blue eyes" I'm still trying to figure out what "pointed blue eyes" are supposed to look like.

On the next page, "a hive of activity" and "An inventory of their hats alone spoke of the Belvedere's clientele; top hats and coke hats and westerns and cattlemans [sic?](couldn't find this one in Google), homburgs and Dakotas and Sinaloas." It's as if he found all these neat old hat names and just had to get them into the book.

By the end of about 15 pages, I was spending more time finding turns of phrase that I hated and not paying attention to what was going on in the book. I wasn't sure about the point of what was happening anyway.

I'm most disappointed with Stephen King, who I trusted after his rave review of my favorite book, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.
Life is too short to read poorly written stupid books.

[Charlaralotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Read it in two days flat. Even woke up during the night to keep going. Very few authors can pull off intricately structured novels that weave back and forth between multiple characters and moments in history. Evison manages to do it, and the result is a tour de force: the strong and sweeping storytelling of a masterful omniscient voice similar to Sir Walter Scott or Dickens. Right up there with today's big guns Franzen and Lethem, or perhaps more Maureen Howard and Louis de Bernieres because I do prefer Evison's decision to leap back and forth in time as well as between character viewpoints.

"West of Here" is full of adventures in real life and adventures within the minds of the characters, and the occasional moments of magical realism are deftly applied. It's a book that makes you want to read more about the past, and to think more about the future. It's a book that makes you wake up and wonder where exactly these pursuits of the "American Dream" and "Manifest Destiny" are leading us. And it's one of the few books I've read in the past couple years where I haven't moaned about the lack of proper editing. I'll take two sequels, please.

[Travis Fortney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yowzah! This is a rare and wonderful book. It's a historical/eco/po-mo/wistfully-romantic/bildungsroman/tragicomic mashup that comes in at 500 pages, features 40 points of view, manages to be entertaining and readable, effortlessly places literary references alongside pop culture, and ends up being deeply affecting, as well as very uplifting (it slowly dawns on you that that the two timelines--1890 and 2006--are essentially about the "rise" and "rise" of Port Bonita, the fictional town where the story takes place). It's a real credit to Evison that he does all this without constantly drawing attention to what a feat it is. I'm in awe.

Should you read it? Does the pope shit in the woods?

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

West of Here has fallen prey to my new "life is too short to finish a book just because you started it" philosophy. I loved "The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving" and wanted to love this also. Evison's writing is excellent, I just could not embrace his subject matter. The realities of the wild west offer little variation: things are either grim or grimmer. Evison populates his story with a lot of main characters, moving between them so often that it's hard to attach to any particular one. I'm keeping Evison on my list, but for now, I'm moving on to new frontiers.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dude has a distracting obsession with using the word 'wending'—cars, trails, people when they're alone, people in thick crowds: everything is 'wending' in West of Here. (I think you get away with that word a couple times in a book, not multiple times per chapter.)
Otherwise, solid novel, asking the timeless questions of what keeps us going after years of mistakes both large and small, and if it's possible for both people and communities to begin again. Think of Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane" and then put that vibe into a sprawling, historical and very place-based book and you've got something like West of Here.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Living near 'West of Here' an interesting advent of different realities paralleling each other then and now...

[David O'neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

In late 2010, long before Borders was officially closing down, the novel West of Here arrived as ARC at my store. Still coming down from the high that was filming Judas Kiss in Seattle and remembering the grandeur and beauty of the area, I was intrigued by the book –an ambitious historical book on the Pacific Northwest. But as most book readers will tell you –and even writers- a lot of books end up on the shelf because either one other novel takes precedence or –as sometimes happens- you are not in the mood to read it. Such as what happened with Jonathan Evison’s book. I eventually passed on the ARC to my friend Carlos –writer of Judas Kiss- because he lives in Seattle when not roaming the United States (though by live, I mean it’s more of a place where he hangs a hat for a few weeks. I also never expected the book back, because I have so many others to read).

But something strange happened. The idea of the book never left me, and while I never thought about the book during Borders closing, I had been haunting used bookstores in search of it (which also brought me the realization that used bookstores very rarely have more unusual titles beyond really popular books. Finding “literature” amongst the mass produced, broad-based fiction is very hard in small used stores, which is why I have to venture to The Last Bookstore or Iliad’s these days to find titles outside of the James Patterson, Nora Roberts and Danielle Steele that haunt those types of stores).

I love history, but it can sometimes be dry and too academic. I have a few history books in boxes here, ones that I want to get to eventually, but as Lemony Snicket says, “It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read.”

The fictional town of Port Bonita — a stand-in for Port Angeles — is at the center of West of Here, which is dually set in the winter of 1889-90 and the summer of 2006, as the story follows those hoping to build their legacies in the wilds of Washington state's Olympic Peninsula and their raggedy ancestors who, ironically, have lost the will that Manifest Destiny that excited their distant relatives. Evison cram’s a few novels into this ambitious book, along with a large set of characters and as the book steamed along, I became more interested in the people that made Port Bonita, especially characters like Eva –a pregnant, proto-suffragette woman from a wealthy family who longs to show her family and her baby’s father, Ethan, that she can survive in this new, utopian society. And then there is Thomas, the Indian boy known as the Storm King in 1890, and his metaphysical -maybe magical- connection to sullen teenager Curtis in 2006.

The novel has many parallels in the book – like how in the past, people seemed more adventurous, where in the present, and the town’s folk seemed trapped, not able to get away, and the author has a flare for description of the town and its people, but they do come off as superficial –maybe because he tried to cram too much into a slim book –it’s only 484 pages long.

Still, Evison is a good writer, and the story very entertaining, if not unwieldy towards the end. But overall, a fun –and sometimes funny – look at the past and the present.

[Mark Steinberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed all the characters in both the 1890 story and th 2006 story. Because I've spent so much time on the Olympic Peninsula, I especially enjoyed this book.

[Greg Zimmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the surface, Jonathan Evison's West of Here is pretty simple: It's the story of the people who inhabit the small fictional town of Port Bonita, Washington. Two dueling story lines from two different times (1890 and 2006) chronicle the fortunes of the folks in the tiny burg located on the northern coast of Washington's Olympic Peninsula.

But when you really dig into the underbrush, you discover an incredibly inventive story that churns along at a deceptively quick pace. Having told you that, it may seem hard to believe that the centerpiece, as well as the central symbol, of the story is a dam. Yep, a dam. But it works, because the dam is really only the unifying force of the various themes of the story. This is a character-driven novel, and these characters are a lot of fun to "watch."

Ethan Thornburgh built the dam in 1890, hoping it'll be the key to putting Port Bonita on the map. Now, Ethan's great-grandson, Jared runs the last remaining processing plant of the town's dying fish industry, bemoaning what he perceives to be his inescapable past. "...he forever lived in the shadow of this obsolete dam, his fortune linked inextricably to its hulking existence, its legacy of ecological menace...Such were the trappings of history."

The dam is a symbol both of progress, as well as attachment to a flawed past. To explore that idea of the past's link to the present is what drives this story. That in itself is less original than some of the ways Evison chooses to tell the story, sprinkling in a little Native American mysticism, providing a hugely diverse cast of characters, and shifting perspectives among them to keep the story fresh.

Like Ethan and Jared, each of the novel's character from the 1890s story has a sort of counterpart in the 2006 story. In addition the past-present link, this also gives Evison fertile ground for examining another main thrust of the story: the age-old nature vs. nurture question — or, as one character asks, "Do you think people are born a certain way? Or do you think people are made?"

West of Here is far from a perfect novel — for instance, there's a scene told from the perspective of a mule about to be shot, which is just silly. And some of the parts in which characters are exploring the peninsula start to sound repetitive — but I really enjoyed it. What you have here is a touch of David Mitchell (in terms of story originality and fluid prose), a sprig or two of David Guterson (in terms of writing about the natural wonders of the Pacific Northwest), and a pinch of Richard Russo (in terms of vivid, empathetic writing about small-bust-town life). Give it a try if you're a fan of any of those three novelists, or if you like the dueling past-present storytelling strategy, or if you simply like an original story that explores some common themes in new ways.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this case I have to award 3 stars for liking one third of the book, but rarely have I been so disappointed in the direction chosen by an author. You really get into the wonders of the Pacific Northwest and the early (1890's) settlers, though fictional, when you are suddenly and rudely catapulted into 2006 and confronted with disturbing and vulgar descendants of these pioneers.
Forget that...just looking through book again for the redeeming qualities that seduced me into reading further - the descriptions of trekking through the challenging woods and failing to master the rapids with a carefully constructed boat - vaporized by the ramblings and what must be drug-induced postulating...backing it down to two stars. I'm done with author.