Customer Reviews

The Last Crossing

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

a top score. The author writes a 19th century novel the way it might have been written 150 years ago. In terms of scope, I think this novel closely resembles A.B. Guthrie's, The Big Sky, more than anything else. It takes time to tackle these Post Modern pieces and it takes a while to care about anyone in here but gradually the reader begins to understand the relationships. A lot of stuff goes unsaid which I think speaks well for any writer. We know that Aloysius is a devoted friend to Custis and we figure it out without being clubbed with it. The relationship between Jerry Potts and Custis also figures in this vein. I would like to have read more of Potts' story. My only criticism and it is mild is that Charles narrates a bit too long.
If you want to read something ultimately satisfying in non traditional ways, this might be your ticket.

Some books one devours, some one lingers over. I just wolfed down The Last Crossing; now I'm slowly enjoying a second read. Such a wealth of characters, such fine historical detail, wonderfully researched and poetically rendered. It takes time to grow accustomed to the book's language, which is period-authentic - "pettifogging," "purloined" ... "Ellie Venables had fairly sickened with indignation at their pussillanimity." Such is the discourse of Oxford-educated Victorians. The words grow lean and dusty as the brothers Gaunt travel west and land in the fly-blown midwest, a landscape filled with whiskey-slugging Civil War veterans, barroom philosophes and thuggish hired hands. The major set pieces are vivid and violent, Addington Gaunt is a genuinely evil piece of work, the battle recreations are staggering...

This is an excellent depiction of what we imagine life to be in the North American wilderness in the last part of the XIXth century, without the airbrush effects that plagues this sort of epic.
The author, building on previous successes (notably The Englishman's boy), wants us to stay with his book far too long. Some of the "stories within the story" may be interesting but add nothing to the action nor to the understanding of the characters.
Some of the characters are not sufficiently developed for the reader to know them well: perhaps it would have been better to not try to insert them in the story.
But all in all it is a very good and fascinating book.

The book was chosen by CBC Radio's Canada Reads programme as THE book Canadians should read (2003). Hmm. I was impressed by Vanderhaege's previous novel, the Englishman's Boy, so I decided to see for myself.

The book takes place mainly in Canada's North West territory, circa 1880. It is the story of a diverse group of individuals: British, American, Metis, Cree and Blackfoot, whose lives briefly intersect. Simon Gaunt is lost in the wilderness and his twin brother Charles and elder brother Addington set off to try to find him. They provision their expedition in Fort Benton, Montana. Jerry Potts, a Scot/Blackfoot frontiersman, Mrs. Stovall, and Curtis Straw, a horse trader, are the other main characters. The story follows the motley band as it treks through the prairie from Fort Benton to Fort Edmonton.

The main characters alternate as narrators. As a result we understand the true inner motivations of, and the misinterpretations of events by, the characters. We understand the deceptions between the characters. What is not said is often as important as what is said. In my view this is a very good technique. These characters are very well developed.

I particularly like the portrait of Potts, the frontiersman, who is caught between two cultures. His character is based on a real person. To the Europeans he is a near savage. In fact he is a hero who knows what needs to be done and does it. He is a man of integrity who does things not because of a reward but because that is what must be done. These unsung heroes slip into our past unnoticed but are in fact the real heroes. It is only through works of "fiction" that we can see their importance.

Not that this is a story without action! There is a murder, which remains a mystery throughout the novel. There are several violent confrontations which are part of the infamous whisky trade of Fort Whoop-Up. One comes across a ghost camp where an Indian band has been wiped out by small pox. There is a dramatic battle between two Indian tribes. There is also an excellent account of the civil war battle in the Wideness. I thought these actions sequences were particularly well written.

This novel is an excellent portrayal of human beings from whatever age who must confront the uncertainty and ambiguity of existence. I would highly recommend it.

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

This is a journey, an adventure of the heart for life and love of many but to include Lucy. You have to read about Lucy, I won't give up her flight. The writing, this is among the great works in modern literature. Left me completely awed and will remember this book for years. Custis Straw, the most portrayed character, as a means to relay the story, is so well revealed in the writing style that this is a book you feel part of. The journey is not so much of place or time, but of spirit and love. Late 19th century or not, the theme is all time and relates to our day and age completely. I wish to recommend a similar excellent book with this same journey in Mind, SB or God By Karl Maddox.

I just wanted to throw my two cents in and say what a wonderful book this is. I wont go back over all the plot as that has been done enough here, but "The Last Crossing" does for the Canadian Frontier what "Lonesome Dove" did for the american western, that is reinvent it! This is a book all Canadians should read! I am not a big fan of westerns but this book transcends the genre.

The Last Crossing was a book I read after it won the CBC Canada Reads contest. I love Canadian literature and had never read this author's work before so I thought I would give it a shot.
While I found the characters and the plot a little masculine at first, I was soon swept into the adventure of the search for Simon Gaunt. I didn't feel any special attachment to the characters, but I was reluctant for their personal tragedies to be resolved. Believing I knew how the book ended, the author surprised me by depriving me of the predictability of it, and I found myself deeply invested in the resolution of everyone's journey.
Really a fantastic book--one that I thought about long after it finished.