From Amazon
Amazon Best of the Month, February 2011: Jonathan Evison opens his electrifying epic,
West of Here, at the Elwha River dam, where over a hundred years since settlers of the fictional town of Port Bonita tamed the river, their descendants gather in anticipation of the dam's blasting, and a new era of restoration. Across the next five hundred pages, Evison's story moves between 2006 and the town's earliest days at the close of the 19th century, overlaying stories of the people who passed through or dug in at Port Bonita, which swelled from settlement to town on the ragged shoreline of Washington State's Strait of Juan de Fuca. The past is populated by intrepid folk--an exploration party penetrating the Olympic Mountain range in the depths of winter, Klallam natives sickened by homeland eviction and whiskey, a young feminist at odds with motherhood, a prostitute doing covert battle with her whorehouse's owner, and an idealistic entrepreneur, blasting the river canyon into submission. In 2006, we meet their softer progeny--an ex-con who flees into the mountains with a stash of Snickers, the lonely parole officer determined to find him, a fish processing plant worker with a Bigfoot fixation, a native woman who rethinks her whole life when her son has a psychic break, and more memorable characters haunted by the past, by their unlived lives, by themselves. Though its themes are weighty, West of Here never bogs down--irreverent humor, lustrous prose, and unexpected moments animate a tale as vast as the land it inhabits. --Mari Malcolm
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
Review
“An enjoyable, meaty read—a vision of a place told through the people who find themselves at the edge of America’s idea of itself.” —
Los Angeles Times“[A] booming, bighearted epic.” —
Vanity Fair“Riotously funny . . . Wonderfully charming.”
—
The New York Times Book Review“[A] big, booming ruckus of a novel . . . Evison [is] a tremendously gifted storyteller.”
—
San Francisco ChronicleA "booming, bighearted epic."
--Vanity Fair (
Vanity Fair )
"A big novel about the discovery and rediscovery of nature, starting over, and the sometimes piercing reverberations of history, this is a damn fine book." --
Publishers Weekly, starred review
(
Publishers Weekly )
"Evison switches easily between 19th-century vernacular and contemporary lingo, and the tenderly funny result is both pioneer story and social commentary. You'll want to reread it to catch cross-references between the parallel stories." --
American Way (
American Way )
"Evison, author of this audacious historical novel, manages a near-impossible feat: first, he creates an almost absurdly complex narrative structure, bridging more than 100 years of life in Washington State and encompassing multiple points of view, and then he grounds the sublime architechtonic whole in the vividly realized daily lives of characters who exist completely in their individual moments but whose actions reverberate back and forth across time . . . [This] is a testament to the books' greatness."
--Booklist, starred review
(
Booklist )
“[A] booming, bighearted epic.” —
Vanity Fair“Riotously funny . . . Wonderfully charming.”
—
The New York Times Book Review“[A] big, booming ruckus of a novel . . . Evison [is] a tremendously gifted storyteller.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle“Evison gives us a jaunty, rain-slicked quest story . . . Its ending is clever and satisfying, and its arrival could signal the breakout of a promising career.”
—
Cleveland Plain Dealer
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
