Customer Reviews

The Big Sky

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Big Sky is not just a masterpiece, it's probably THE masterpiece of the genre of western frontier fiction. This is unusual because it deals with a moment in time that isn't really dealt with that much - the Rocky Mountain fur trade during its golden age of about 1820 - 1850. The cowboy era has been responsible for most of western film and literature, partly because the images and events that happen in that world are recognizable to us: the economic and social issues you always see dealt with in "cowboy" movies mirror our own experiences in many ways. The cowboy has also been said to be an image of freedom to Americans, when actually nothing was further from the truth. Cowboys were regular working stiffs, about as romantic as carpenters or plumbers in their own day. They didn't consider themselves "free", nor would they have spent much time thinking about it during their brutal 14 hour work day. They did what they did because they loved horses and riding and cattle and it was good honest work that paid a living wage, and there was a bit of swagger to it - people in town recognized cow hands for the tough-as-leather men they were, especially with their characteristic boots and hats and general flair for the dramatic that many had. But it was backbreaking work, and the entire cowboy heydey lasted less than 30 years.

I said all that to say that "The Big Sky" really is about freedom, and really is about the West. It's about the true, wild, primitive west, before the plow, before roads, when there were still huge, intact Indian cultures in place with armies of horsemen and enormous herds of buffalo. So it's interesting to me that this genre is largely ignored, but I can see why - there are no set-piece plots just begging to be turned into movies - no "new sherriff in town" characters, because there are no sherriffs, and no towns other than a few trading posts. There is only the land and the sky and the interaction between a few incredibly brave white men and all those Indians.

If you don't already know, this is the story of Boone Caudill and his friend Jim Deakins, and several important side characters, but it's basically Boone's book. He's driven west by an aching need for wildness and freedom, and is pushed out by a brutal father. He makes his way west to St. Louis, along the way befriending Deakins, in hopes of meeting his uncle Zeb who had become a trapper years earlier. The rest of the tail is complex and interlaced, and not a simplistic good guy/bad guy plot at all, and what stands out is the crystalline depictions of the people and places and over all, arching like the sky itself, is freedom. Freedom to roam at will in that beautiful country is the main character of this book. Freedom is the religion, the politics, the philosophy, the recreation - it is everything that is important. The trappers are there to trap - sure - but they're really there because this is a wild, free place, where they will not be hampered by rules, where they can be natural men. It sounds over romanticized, but it really did happen that way, and from what we know, that is truly the way they felt about their lives and why they endured the agonies of that existence. Despairing that new settlers are moving west and building farms and towns, Boone cries "Lord, Jim - remember the Tetons standing proud in the sun, and the Seeds Ke Dee...don't you remember her when she was all purty and new and not a man track on her save Injun?" This novel makes you sob like few I've ever read. The sense of loss, the closing of an age of the world, hangs in the air like mist. They are going to be the last to see something so precious, and for their pains they get to watch their world wither and die under the press of settlement.

The movie "The Mountain Men" with Charleton Heston comes close to capturing a tiny bit of this book, and you can tell it's inspired in many ways by it, but no other book or film has ever come close to truly painting the world of the mountain man as has this novel. "Jeremiah Johnson" is another good film, with many fine touches. But if you want to follow the water up stream, back to its source in the mountains, then please, before you grow too old, read "The Big Sky" and open your heart to that time and place and the wild, brazen beauty of the America few Americans know ever existed.

Hi folks, my name's James Drury. I played The Virginian for nine years, as some of you may remember, and I had occasion to read many Western and to enjoy many of them come to life on the screen. None of them were much better than this book by A.B. Guthrie. This man writes with a power that is seldom seen anymore, a power and a flowing poetry that would be hard to beat. If you haven't read this book, please do yourself the favor. I promise you will not regret it. This one is not to be missed. A.B. Guthrie, with this book, has produced a story as ruggedly poetic as the best of Elmer Kelton, Kirby Jonas or Elmore Leonard--even Jack Schaefer.

The Big Sky is the first in a series of great Western novels by A.B. Guthrie. The story begins in 1830 as young Boone Caudill escapes his Kentucky home for the plains and mountains of the west. He meets up with Jim Deakins, a pleasant country philosopher, early on his journey and finally the experienced mountain man Dick Summers on the keelboat trip up the Missouri.

I enjoyed Deakins' theological disquisitions. "You can't beat God for bein' picky. No, sir. If he catches you playin' cards or sayin' one swear word...it's to hell with you forever and ever...Even thinkin' is mighty dangerous. As a man thinketh, that's how he is, and to hell with him ag'in. Why you reckon he gave us a thinker then?...God is some busybody."

Guthrie takes us up the Missouri, a slow fight all the way, across the plains, into the mountains and back. He creates for the reader the palpable sense of the openness and wildness of the West. Yet the book steps back from fully romanticizing the end of the mountain man era. The story is often disturbing, not the least in Boone Caudill's quick and often brutal ways.

Highest recommendation for anyone interested in the American West.

I have read The Big Sky three times, and scanned it many more. Having grown up in Browning, MT, this book really takes me home. What sets Guthrie's work apart from other writers of the mountain man genre, is character development. The way characters like Jim Deakins, and Boone Caudill, and Dick Summers, become complete people, is uncanny. The internal dialogues each carry on is fascinating. Jim's thoughts about god are succinct, and( I feel) right on the money. Boone Caudill is a misfit in any society, and the only way he could possibly live and let live, is utterly on his own. He becomes "broody" when in the company of others, and is nowhere near likable. His demeanor is completely opposed to that of Jim Deakins, who is carefree, and refuses to take anything too seriously. Boone's words, upon their meeting, "A man would have to be willing to stand by his partner, come whatever" (a paraphrase), turn out to be very ironic. Dick Summers is really the main character, as his saga continues through "The Way West", and "Fair Land, Fair Land". He is the balance between the two, and the glue that holds the partnership together. This book chronicles the heyday of the fur trade, and signals the end of that era, and the open west. I'd highly recommend it to anyone, be it for it's accurate descriptions of the time, or it's sociological implications. It is not just another mountain man story.

What Larry McMurty's "Lonesome Dove" is to the cowboy of the old west, A.B. Guthrie's "The Big Sky" is to the mountain men of roughly the same period. "Lonesome Dove" gives us August McCrae and W.F. Call; "The Big Sky" introduces us to Boone Caudhill, Jim Deakins, and Dick Summers. These are magical characters, brought to three-dimensional life by the skills of the respective authors. The pacing of "The Big Sky" is right on. Guthrie gives us a few pages of quiet introspection as we get to know the heart and soul of his creations, and then hints of danger to follow building extreme foreboding of trouble ahead. This is followed by high-tension, full-fisted action as the individual conflicts are met head-on; then comes another quiet period to allow us to catch our breath. This is not a shoot-em-up Western, but a realistic portrayal of life and times of 1830 to 1843 in the American northwest written for the mature reader. In fact, it is realistic to a surprising degree. No more to be said about that, because I don't wish to destroy your delight of discovery. "The Big Sky" is the first in a series of six books in the so-called "Big Sky series." This first book has been designated "the best novel of the American West" by the Western Literature Association. The sequel, "The Way West," won the Pulitzer Prize. I can't wait to read it; in fact I began immediately following the last page of the first book.

I first read this book when I was 14 or 15 years old and it lead to a lifelong interest in the fur trade era and the history of western expansion. I have re-read it several times since and continue to be amazed by it's power. Guthrie's love of the land about which he writes is obvious. His writing is perhaps the most evocative of place that I have ever read. I have never been to the plains or the Rockies, yet from reading this book I have come to feel as though I knew these places when they were still wild. His characters are real and believable people, with strengths and weaknesses and distinctly different personalities. Dick Summers in particular stands out in his humanity - a strong character with a gentle and compassionate side. Guthrie has also obviously studied the details of the mountain man's life. His descriptions of dress, mannerisms, and customs add depth to an already remarkable book. Although certainly not necessary, it might be helpful to keep a good map and/or a guide to Native Americans at hand while reading this book in order to orient yourself to places and tribes as you read. A great book.

Take the plunge and read the whole series. I found this book by accident and was drawn in by its lonely main character, Boone, from the start. The language is a little odd to get used to at first, as Guthrie's characters talk in the syle of men of their ilk and era. It transports the reader to a time when Indians and trappers lived freely. I think if you stay with it you will be richly rewarded. To me, Guthrie's characters are like characters in many McMurtry books I have loved; I remember them as if they were real people I have known. Also I found Guthrie's plots to be surprising and moving. After finishing this book I continued with four more, reading them in order. Guthrie chronicles the West, returning to Montana after The Way West, a wagontrain journey to Oregon, from the early unsettled times of The Big Sky to post World War II. Some characters, or their decendents, thread their way through each novel. This was an extremely rich reading experience that left me with a deeper understanding of the "progress" we have made.

This is historical fiction as it should be. All the main characters are fictional, and actual people (like Jim Bridger and Jedediah Smith) are either only mentioned in passing or play a small enough role so as to not conflict with actual history. In fact, the whole story is fictitious, and only the setting and some of the main events are real. But that is what gives this story its power--the ability to see, through the eyes of the characters, the American west as it would have looked through the eyes of a mountain man.

The novel centers on Boone Caudill, a young Kentuckian who sets out for the west and becomes a true mountain man. The story follows Boone through thirteen years of Indian fights, beaver trapping, and winters of near-starvation. Boone, along with his companions, lives a life that is representative of the one many true mountain men actually led, and there is very little attempt made by Guthrie to romanticize it. The life was a hard one, a cruel one, and Guthrie does not make it seem more glamorous than it actually would have been. Despite this, however, we can still feel Boone's pull toward the West, and we are able to feel longing for the solitude of the mountains through his eyes.

This novel is, for the most part, pretty historically accurate. The Rendezvous of 1837, the smallpox epidemic among the Blackfeet that same year, the greenhorns swarming to Oregon--all these are things that are very real. These events are woven nicely within the narrative, giving the reader a true feel of the disappearing west such as could scarcely be gleaned from a history text.

Granted, this book should be taken with a grain of salt. It is not a romanticized view of the west, but then it is not a historical text either. It would be wrong to see it as anything more than one man's interpretation of how it was to be a mountain man. Still, for all that, it is a wonderful and compelling story, very well-told. And don't be surprised if you learn a little bit of history while reading it.

The Big Sky, by A.B Guthrie,tells the too-real-to-be-fiction story of Boone Caudill, Jim Deakins, and Dick Summers. The great description of the area, Northwestern Montana, is 100% accuate, from the indian tribes found in the region, to the local dialects of the men. Guthrie wrote this story as if he were actually in the place of the men, and if everything actually took place in the story. Boone is the stereotypical "mountain man" of the story, the rough, rugged, hard nosed hero. His best friend, Jim Deakins, is the anti-Boone character. Jim can also be considered a mountain man, but his personality is completly different then Boone's. Throughout the book, the characters come to life, where the reader becomes concerned and scared for Boone, Jim, and Dick through their trials. The tone almost throughout the entire story is Paranoia. Thsi is true, because Boone and Jim start to realize their paradise in Montana is becoming new stomping ground for people coming west to settle. Boone then becomes paranoid of people around him, where he finally isolates himself in the woods, with no human contact beside a few blackfeet indians. Boone also becomes weary of staying inside a house, or any space where he is not outside in the free land. He becomes depresed if he is taken out of his habitat for a great period of time, perhaps because he is paranoid that he won't be able to stay in nature any longer if he is stuck outside it. This becomes clear when his father dies, and he travels back to Kentucky. He describes his feelings of Kentucky as follows "He had felt at home outdoors. It was as if the land and sky and wind were friendly, and no need for a pack of people about to make him easy. The wind had a voice to it, and the land lay ready for him, and the sky gave room for his eye and mind. But now he felt different, cramped by the forest that rose thick as grass over him, shutting out the sun and letting him see only a piece of sky now and then, and it faded and closed down like a roof. THe wind was dead here, not even the leaves of the grat poplars, rising high over all the rest, so much as trembled. It was a still, closed-in, broody world, and a man in it went empty and lost inside, as if all that he had counted on was taken away, and he without a friend or an aim or a proper place anywhere."(page 357) Overall, this book is a great book if you love reading a passionate story about a man and his one true love, nature. Boone represents the man with the call of the wild in his soul, and his struggle to keep what he has while he can. Living in Montana, this book is also an interesting story that depicts the lives of people living where I now call home in the 1830's.

Guthrie's incredible characters, Dick, Boone, and Jim, personify the near-mythical mountain man we later see stereotyped as Jeremiah Johnson, Grizzly Adams, and countless others. Guthrie defines these simple and compelling wanderers of the verdant yet unforgiving West at a time when wild animals and Indians still ruled.

The Big Sky is an American history lesson. It is a preservation in beautiful prose of a rich landscape now largely gone. It is the dictation of the dream shared by many a young male (and plenty in mid-life-crisis) to roam free, shed all societal complications, live off the land, and to face all fears. It is one of my favorite books, matched only by The Frontiersman by Alan Eckert.

The writing contains a great balance of scene, plot, characterization, and action. It's readable by all from age twelve on up. You just can't go wrong with this one. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.