About this title: In 1847, when Karen Fisher's great-grandmother's grandmother, Emma Ruth, was 11 years old, she and her family went west on a wagon train, and Emma left behind a chronicle of the experience. A century and a half later, Fisher has based a novel on Emma's life, broadening it to include the story of the wagon train's guide, a Scottish trapper who falls in love with Emma's mother, Lucy. Merging a rich saga-like story with the intimate details of domestic existence, A SUDDEN COUNTRY provides a dazzling window into the period, and into the life of a particular family as they make their difficult way ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: First edition.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9781400063222ISBN:1400063221
Description: Very good in fair dust jacket. Pages in nearly like new condition. DJ shows wear. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 366 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: Advance Reading Copy/Uncorrected Proof
Binding: Paper/SEWN
Publisher: Random House, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9781400063222ISBN:1400063221
Description: Very Good. No Jacket. Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) 6 x 9 In Tall. Lower front corner is bent a a little. Advance Reading Copy/Uncorrected Proof. read more
Description: Very Good. 1400063221 *HCDJ * SHIPPING WITHIN 24 HOURS! ** QUESTIONS ANSWERED QUICKLY ** THANKS ** HARDCOVER BOOK WITH DUST JACKET. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9781400063222ISBN:1400063221
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Ex) Library Copy. Moderate wear on Cover Interior Pages. Usual library markings. (W2) Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 366 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN-13:9780812973433ISBN:0812973437
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Very good. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Purchasing this book supports the King County Library System Foundation. Thriftbooks and KCLSF have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN-13:9780812973433ISBN:0812973437
Description: Good. Purchasing this book supports the King County Library System Foundation. Thriftbooks and KCLSF have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN-13:9780812973433ISBN:0812973437
Description: Very good. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN-13:9780812973433ISBN:0812973437
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
"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."
"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."
"I had this book from the library for almost 9 weeks and got halfway through it before I admitted that it just wasn't holding my interest. Maybe it's the writing style. While at times lyrical, Fisher's prose can be maddeningly cryptic. I had to reread numerous passages to ascertain whether they described actual events or merely the daydreams of one of the two main characters. These characters posed another problem for me. Neither was particularly likable. Lucy, although understandably unhappy in her marriage to a man she doesn't love, comes across as more sullen than sympathetic. And MacLaren is just flat-out depressing with his constant self-flagellation. I found it hard to believe that any woman would fall for him in that state. Again, I didn't finish it, and maybe it got better toward the end, but I found I just didn't care enough to find out."
"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."
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