Product Description
This epic tale sweeps across continents and time, hovers over a key area in American History, and deftly realizes the humanity of a whole cast of characters. Charles and Addington are two brothers sent from the comforts of Victorian England by their dictatorial father to find Simon, a brother missing somewhere in the depths of the American West. As Charles, a sensitive painter, and Addington, an arrogant former Soldier, search the American frontier, they gather a tr… More >>
#1 by Candace on July 2, 2010 - 5:41 pm
The good news is that Canadian writer Guy Vanderhaeghe has published six other books besides this one. This is important because once you finishedhis new novel “The Last Crossing” you will be scouring libraries, bookstores, and the internet for more.
What a good writer! His 1996 novel “The Englishman’s Boy” was also excellent, but his newest book reaches an even higher level. His use of multiple points of view is marvelous and the characters have a depth and appeal that adds excitement, pathos, and surprise to a really good plot.
In the 1870’s, a young Englishman named Simon Gaunt travels into Montana as a missionary and vanishes. His difficult, heartbroken father orders his two other sons to go to Ft. Benton and find him at all costs. Addington is a disgraced military man and Simon’s twin Charles is a painter disappointed in himself for his own shallow nature. Charles is desperate to find Simon but Addington seems to look on the whole trip as one big outdoor adventure, showing up at the fort with a seedy, sycophantic “newspaperman” who plans to record Addington’s feats in the wilderness for the penny press. They contract the Blackfoot/Scottish guide Jerry Potts to lead them, but by the time the Gaunts’ wagons leave Ft. Benton, they have also collected a woman searching for her sister’s killer and are trailed by the man who loves her, and who in turn is trailed by his best friend. The search for the missing missionary is in danger of being derailed by the quirks and passions of his search party. But Simon Gaunt remains the lodestar for this group, and only later do we find out why.
“The Last Crossing” is satisfying, readable, thoughtful, and thrilling. If you have not read Guy Vanderhaeghe before, he is a wonderful discovery.
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by Mary Whipple on July 2, 2010 - 6:28 pm
In this broad saga of the New Territories, from Montana into Canada, Guy Vanderhaeghe brings to life the search of two Englishmen for their lost brother, Simon Gaunt, who has pursued a charismatic preacher in the hopes of converting the Indians to Christianity. No word has been heard from him in over a year. While twin brother Charles genuinely misses Simon, older brother Addington sees the search as a grand, selfish adventure-an excuse to hunt at his father’s expense. The three brothers share the same blood and have had the same upbringing, but they have taken very different paths in life, and the sojourn in North America provides the stimulus which allows each one to discover his own inner nature. As Addington becomes more brutal and selfish, Charles becomes more sensitive and realistic. Gradually, an image of Simon emerges, through Charles’s descriptions, as a “man dreaming so deeply as to be incapable of wakening to reality.”
As the search party departs, every member is seeking some kind of love, acceptance, and a sense of connection to the wider world. Jerry Potts, the scout, is half Scots and half Blackfoot Indian and yearns for his small son from whom he is estranged. Lucy Stoveall is searching for the brutal killers of her 13-year-old sister Madge Dray. Custis Straw, who loves Lucy, suffers from nightmares about the Civil War and the loss of his family. Addington, who becomes deranged as time progresses, hunts and kills animals and Indians for the sheer bloodlust. Constant motifs of blood and bloodlines pervade the novel, as the trip challenges each member to understand who s/he is by birth and who s/he has become through the accidents of history.
The great Northwest, with the power and grandeur of its scenery, its wildlife, and its rapidly changing weather provides for innumerable dramatic scenes. The honorable and caring Lucy and the venal Addington are as much the personifications of good and evil as the heroines and villains in western melodrama. Ultimately, all the plot elements unite in a satisfying conclusion which extends twenty-five years beyond the search for Simon and ties up loose ends. Rousing and absorbing, this melodrama highlights the settlement of the frontier at the expense of Indian cultures, and one can almost hear echoes of a melancholy honkytonk piano in the background. Mary Whipple
Rating: 4 / 5
#3 by Milko McGillicuddy on July 2, 2010 - 7:35 pm
Once in awhile, a book comes along that haunts its readers’ thoughts for years. The Last Crossing is such a book.
Set in the latter part of the 1800s, in the western U.S. and Canada, and in Victorian England, this is a tale of a a man lost in the wilderness, and those who seek to find him, including his very stiff British father, two very different brothers, a pair of star-crossed lovers, a quirky journalist, a saloon-keeper, and an Indian guide. They all suffer from painful pasts that taunt them into life-changing courses of action.
Telling the story from their own points of view, the characters look back at their own lives. This drives each of them to live up to their sense of duty, to defend their own honor, and ultimately to act in one way or another because they either love, or can’t love.
Scenes of the early west tear at the heart–caravans, Indian villages, conflicts, battles, disease, death, tragedy, comic relief. And love, sometimes unrequited, and at a distance. There is one scene that will stay with me for years. In it, two lovers find each other, their desperate searches ending and beginning in an instant. The night air, the stars, the prairie wind and their hearts carry them to where they couldn’t dream of going.
The characters speak with undeniable truth to and about themselves. They narrate, but also wonder about their own personal honor and how they can love despite their pasts and the hard lessons that duty and love teach them.
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by Ron Franscell, Author of 'The Darkest Night' on July 2, 2010 - 8:14 pm
For more than 100 years, authors have sent their heroes into the twin uncharted territories of the wild West and the untamed heart, but few have risen above horse opera or dime novel. Owen Wister’s “The Virginian” and Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove” remain the gold standard for literature of the frontier West.
Uh, make that the American West. It’s good to be reminded, as Guy Vanderhaeghe’s “The Last Crossing” does, that Canada also had a vast, unexplored western territory. And while rails were rapidly being laid across virgin earth and Custer was hurtling toward his last stand, no territorial border truly divided the American and Canadian wildernesses. Marauding Indians, greedy whites, hungry animals and a budding mythology simply didn’t appreciate international boundaries.
Blending intense action with masterly characterization, Vanderhaeghe appeals on various levels. Whether his huge popularity in Canada will trickle south of the border remains to be seen, but this new novel is a sharp and eloquent import. The big question is: Can American readers embrace a sprawling adventure of higher literary value?
He has sometimes been dunned by critics for excruciatingly detailed prose, but such criticism is neither warranted in this case nor unexpected in modern commercial publishing, where action is more highly valued than character.
Vanderhaeghe disregards those boundaries. “The Last Crossing” is a far more satisfying story of a small band’s westward journey than McMurtry’s rambling, four-part Berrybender Narratives, which began in 2002 with “The Sin Killer” and will end later this year with “Folly and Glory.”
While Vanderhaeghe doesn’t rival McMurtry in his prime, – these characters are not nearly as engaging as “Lonesome Dove’s” Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, nor are their travails as gripping – he has contributed a new frontier novel that is braver and more eloquent than all but a handful in the Western oeuvre, Canadian or American.
Rating: 4 / 5
#5 by S. Calhoun on July 2, 2010 - 8:49 pm
Part historical drama, romance, and character study THE LAST CROSSING has a lot to offer – and rightly so. Hailed as a bestseller in Canada for two years and only recently published in the United States I’ve been waiting patiently to get my hands on a copy of this book and now I’m far from being disappointed. Guy Vanderhaeghe takes the reader on an adventure through the British Territory (Canada) filled with remarkable characters and wonderful prose. At the center of the novel are Charles and Addington Gaunt who are sent from England to North America in 1871 by their overbearing father to track down their missing brother Simon who has mysteriously disappeared.
After arriving Charles is distressed to learn that Addington is not as concerned about Simon; in fact, Addington has hired a writer to document his journey through the Frontier in an effort to later write a book. The Gaunt’s caravan into the British Territory in search of Simon is without incident or danger. Vast and wild pastures filled with dueling Indian tribes and scrupulous whisky traders provide the grand backdrop to this impressive tale. To complement the depth and realization of the landscape Vanderhaughe does a great job of getting into the heads of his characters. I was deeply impressed with his depiction of Charles’ torment and grief over his stressed relationship with Simon, and how he wishes he could mend the fences between them. Another successful aspect was how multiple narrators were utilized which enables the reader to gain a better-rounded perspective unlike the reliance of one narrator.
It’s rare indeed that I become so enthralled while reading a book that I virtually sink into the prose and see the story unfolding in three-dimension around me, and that was exactly what happened each time I picked up this book. For this simple fact I wouldn’t hesitate but recommend this book to others. It’s been well worth the wait.
Rating: 4 / 5