| 
 enlarge | Author: Guy Vanderhaeghe
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $36.95
Buy Used: $6.00
You Save: $30.95 (84%)
New (11) from $22.56
Avg. Customer Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 1903960
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 10
Pages: 720
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 6 x 5.3 x 1.5
ISBN: 1565118537
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781565118539
ASIN: 1565118537
Publication Date: February 23, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: CDs have a few light scratches. Plays fine; guaranteed. Box shows edge and corner wear.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Fabulous! February 16, 2005
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
I loved this book and could not put it down. The story is interesting and the writing is wonderful. His characters are rich and complex. I'm going to tell everyone I know about this book. Such pleasure must be shared. Highly recommended. Order one now! Operators are standing by!
Hard to put down! December 30, 2004
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Stunning, rich, exquisite characterization, finely-honed plot...you name it and this book has it. Guy Vanderhaeghe has re-created a historical period here that is timeless and universal in its themes of love, revenge, and family connections yet utterly believable in its deceptively simple plot. I fell in love with the naive Charles Gaunt and was properly contemptuous of his take-charge brother, Addison. The characters of Jerry Potts, Custis Straw and Lucy are complex yet they defy simple pigeonholes. I took the risk of reading this library book in the bathtub (one of my favorite forms of relaxation) since I couldn't stop reading it in my spare time. A thoroughly engaging read!
Sue-Ellen Stillwell Jones
Librarian
Fort Collins, Colorado
Amazing!!! December 20, 2004
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
I don't read many books (oh I've got enough hobbies to kill a horse), but on a tip from a friend I picked this one up. And did I enjoy it? It is amazing. Amazing. I dare say the best read I've ever had. It's a real pass-it-on-to-your-loved-ones-and-read-it-quick-so-we-can-talk-about-it-book. I so recommend it.
 Fine Novel by a Skilled Author November 24, 2004
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The Last Crossing is a soulful story of several colorful characters who come together for various reasons to trek across the North American Midwest in the 1800s. Author Guy Vanderhaeghe is very adept at painting vivid scenes and portraying his characters.
Overall I found reading this novel to be a rewarding experience. Having said this, there were passages where I felt the story dragged, and I found the plot hard to follow. On the other hand, there were many engaging, suspenseful sections that I will remember for some time.
Vanderhaeghe applies a very rich vocabulary in this work. While I consider myself to be well read, I encountered at least fifty words I had never encountered before. I consoled myself with the belief that most of those words were used in the 1850s, and have since fallen out of favor. Vanderhaeghe's writing reflects a wealth of research that he evidently did on the era and places in question.
Anyone interested in getting a feel for the way in which North American Aboriginal and British cultures related to each other will want to read this book. The era described by the novel is the period between native Americans having the continent to themselves, and the British and Europeans dominating the land and its aboriginal inhabitants - a period marked by a mixture of violence, cooperation and assimilation.
A rousing epic of the Old West September 22, 2004
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
At the center of this epic, multi-voiced novel of the American and Canadian West is a lost Englishman and the motley crew that sets out across the prairie to find him. Acclaimed Canadian writer Vanderhaeghe uses this fairly ordinary plot device to tell a rousing, riveting tale of love, lawlessness and the vast cultural gaps that bind and divide.
Simon Gaunt is the missing young man. Favorite son of a self-made British industrialist, Simon disappeared during an 1870 mission to bring Christ to the Indians. The reader knows Simon got lost in a blizzard and was discovered - and maybe rescued - by an Indian "holy being." Simon's family knows only that the leader of the missionary expedition has been found dead, near Fort Benton, on the Montana frontier.
Henry Gaunt sends his two remaining sons, Addington, the militaristic one, and Charles, the artist, to America to find Simon. The cultural gulf between the Brits and their former colonials is instantaneous, wide and deep.
"Until Addington attempted to requisition this room for his own use, I was disgusted by the state of it, the very room which the proprietor boasts is the finest the Overland Hotel has to offer," reflects Charles, Simon's fraternal twin.
Haunted by memories of his gentle, otherworldly brother, Charles organizes the expedition, but waits impatiently on his older brother's leadership. Addington, loaded for bear (literally), has acquired a shady biographer in the tradition of all Western adventurers, and seems to look on the expedition as a rustic "Grand Tour," complete with a wagonload of claret and expensive brandy. Charles, chafing to leave, finds them a guide - Jerry Potts, a half-Indian, half-white woodsman, torn by his heart's allegiance to the two warring cultures he embodies.
But on the eve of their departure a young girl is murdered, and as an indirect consequence, the party grows by three. The girl's sister, Kate Stoveall, left in Fort Benton while her no-account husband sells whiskey to the Indians, joins the party as a cook, seeking the thugs who murdered her sister. Custis Shaw, Civil War veteran, loner and Bible-reading enigma, rides out after Kate, the woman he loves. And saloonkeeper Aloysius Dooley, loyal friend to Custis, goes along to keep an eye on his friend.
Vanderhaeghe ("The Englishman's Boy") moves seamlessly between viewpoints, going deep into his characters' psyches and memories, exploring their self-doubts, joys and demons, without, however, stinting on the action, of which there is plenty, both past and present.
Often the challenging terrain often seems adventure enough: "Powdery clay steams into the air, cloaks men and beasts in a choking, sallow cloud. Everyone is too dry-mouthed to speak, the only sounds accompanying the advance are the faint music of jangling trace chains, the plangent protest of axles, the dull plod of hooves."
And the ill-sorted companions begin to grate even more on each other. "Seeing Addington Gaunt prink and preen is a most grievous pain in the fundament," thinks Custis, who also notes: "The baleful gaze Potts is turning on the Captain makes me a tad uneasy." Custis has more serious matters on his mind, though. Kate and Charles Gaunt, an unsuitable pairing if ever there was one, are spending a lot of time sneaking off together. But Kate rejects his warnings and Charles is too much the gentleman to even acknowledge them.
Vanderhaeghe's West is much like the best of Larry McMurtry's - full of deep souls and vicious creeps, cruelty and kindness, paradox and contradiction and miles of beautiful, dangerous country. His prose is rich and vivid in every voice, from Custis' earthy vernacular to Jerry Potts' barely articulate pain, to Charles' earnest and natural refinement. A big, rousing, involving story from a writer who ought to be better known than he is.
|
|
|
