Another Review at MyShelf.Com

Publisher: Little, Brown (Time Warner)
Release Date: 5 February 2004
ISBN: 0316726176
Awards:  
Format Reviewed: Hardback
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Genre: Historical Literary [1870s Western America & Canada]
Reviewed: 2004
Reviewer: Rachel A Hyde
Reviewer Notes: Some violence
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The Last Crossing
By Guy Vanderhaeghe

     What do you get when you mix a modern western writer like Larry McMurty with a dash of literary spice? Something very like this large tale of searching and discovery. Melancholy portrait artist Charles Gaunt has been dispatched together with his violent, syphilitic brother Addington to the wilds of the American west by their tough, social climber of a father. Their quest is to find their other brother, the strange, childlike Simon who has gone out with snake-oil preacher Obadiah Witherspoon to bring Christianity to the Native Americans. They end up traveling with several other companions, including their scout the half-breed Jerry Potts, beautiful Lucy Stoveall who is looking for the killers of her beloved sister and Caleb Ayto, a journalist who wants to write a book about Addington. Bringing up the rear is Civil War veteran Custis Straw and Irish barkeep Aloysius Dooley. They will head out into the wilderness to find whatever they are all looking for, but as they are forced to confront themselves and their own demons they will all find something, although not necessarily what they have come to seek.

      The main treat here is the author's skill in describing the Northwest of America and Canada in the early 1870s, a place where anything can happen, and therefore a grand place for dreaming or facing nightmares. He writes of a world that is on the brink of vanishing forever, where Indian tribes fight to save their way of life while the depredations of smallpox and the evils of whisky forts threaten to kill it off. This is a place of ghosts, of vast open skies and empty land that seems to go on forever. The tale is told by several narrators, an excellent plan a la Wilkie Collins of letting the reader see what makes each character tick, and of viewing the action through more than one pair of eyes. However, the book's flaw is the lack of sympathetic characters; I read the whole book trying desperately to care for them and their fate and failed miserably, which is a shame. It somehow negated much of the praiseworthy features and made me wonder if I would enjoy more work by this author. The thinking person's adventure story is how I would style it--but lacking in heart.