Oregon trail history now grips my heart.

books:


	• A Sudden Country: A Novel Karen Fisher Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Try it if you're patient

A close friend recommended "A Sudden Country" to me. Otherwise, I doubt that I'd have stuck to it, with its frustrating plot lines and irritating written style. I get tired of authors using sentence fragments as a way of creating immediacy or flow. At times it seemed that half of the sentences began with "Then," followed by no subject: "Then searched her mind for him," or something similar. It makes for choppy reading.
Most interesting were the passages describing the immigrants' travails and travels. Less so were the romantic passages. The conclusion jumps back and forth from Lucy Mitchell to James McLaren even more than the rest of the novel does and forced me, a very experienced reader, to reread passages to understand the events being described. At that point, though, what I wanted was to find out what was going to happen, not spend time excavating my way through fragmented prose and a convoluted story line.
I do, however, have to give credit to Fisher for not taking the easy way out with the conclusion. It's not easy to read so long, only to have an unhappy ending, but it is a satisfactory one.

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Oregon trail history now grips my heart.

Growing up where the Oregon Trail ruts cut through western Nebraska, its story was familiar in a vague, serene way. Through Lucy, James MacLaren and the other characters of "A Sudden Country," my heart is now forever gripped with the pathos of that trail. Karen Fischer weaves the broken strands of native people, mountain men,and the Anglo families leaving their known world, so that the fabric of our country's culture today is revealed. All the characters in A Sudden Country are our ancestors..they are part of what makes us all Americans today.

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Not my cup of tea

I was interested in the setting but the telling was a bit pedantic and did not fire my imagination.

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spectacularly beautiful prose

This is prose at its most exquisite. It is a first-hand look at the American wilderness over 150 years ago, no easy thing to attempt. Yet Karen Fisher does it brilliantly. I am awed at the language, not only its poetry, but its historic accuracy. People didn't use the same speech patterns then as they do today, so yes, at times you have to slow down and think about a passage. But that should not be mistaken for bad style. It is not. The romantic attraction between the two characters pulls the narrative forward, and couldn't be more subtle or honestly rendered. Indeed, I found myself continuously flipping back to the dust jacket to gawk in awe at the author's photo. Who is this person? Where did she get such wisdom and insight? The only problem with this staggeringly impressive book is that it eventually comes to an end.

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Best novel I've read in a long time...

A friend gave me a copy of A SUDDEN COUNTRY, thinking I'd like it because Karen Fisher and her characters are rough and tumble wilderness types, much like the modern women in my recent anthology, A MILE IN HER BOOTS. But as it turns out, I am writing my first ever book review because I found many more acres of common ground in this novel than I imagined. With brazen honesty, Fisher explores raw, gut-level intricacies of humanity--and of my own experience as mother, wife, wanderer--with such skillfully terse poetry that I was reminded why good fiction is worth reading. She takes hold of words and reins them in, wielding them with unsentimental precision, molding them with a sculptor's hand, so that you see, smell, and taste them, rubbing the grit of the story between your fingers as you read it.

The rangy, rugged backdrop of untamed America lured me from the cushions of my couch back to wilder times, when the savage beauty of mere survival was a person's daily toil. I suspect, on some level, many of us hunger for that kind of crude simplicity. I know I do. And, as I read, I got to thinking that although the landscapes on which our lives play out may differ, our condition is pretty much the same in any era. Fleeting moments of intense emotion roar, flicker, and inevitably wash cool in the current of time. Events so significant, so all-consuming, in the present moment are rendered memory across miles of unsympathetic terrain. Passions blur, tears run dry. And yet, throughout the journey, we find ourselves evolving the way Fisher's characters do, pushing onward, accumulating dark and delicate scars that remind us of who we have become.

History, wilderness, romance, drama, fiber - A SUDDEN COUNTRY has it all. I highly recommend it.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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 mother: 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.

From the Hardcover edition.

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