Fair Land, Fair Land [Hardcover]

A. B. Guthrie Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 13, 1982

With his revered classics The Big Sky and The Way West, A. B. Guthrie, Jr., claimed his preeminent post as the father of the western epic. Fair Land, Fair Land, first published in 1982, marks the sequel to his two masterworks and rounds out a chronological gap, the mid-nineteenth century, in Guthrie's Big Sky series. Reappearing here is Dick Summers, of the earlier sagas, now a wizened conservationist who seeks retribution from his former compatriot Boone Caudill and renewed companionship with the self-reliant Teal Eye. Imbued with a rich sense for the impermanence of the idyllic plains, this tour de force offers a stirring commentary on a country's physical and spiritual erosion, as relevant today as it was a decade ago.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Who says the West isn't wild any more? This duo by Guthrie follow on the boot heels of two recent Max Brand reprints (Classic Returns, 10/15/95), perhaps triggering a resurgence of interest in the genre. LJ's reviewer found Fair Land, a sequel to Guthrie's Big Sky and The Way West, "not only an authentic portrayal of the Old West but also a good novel with full-bodied characters and a spare, though picturesque, style" (LJ 9/1/82). The Thousand Hills, however, was deemed "far below the author's usual high standard" (LJ 11/15/56). A hit and a miss.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

"A.B. Guthrie, Jr. has long been regarded as perhaps America's premiere Western historical novelist. Mr. Guthrie was one of the first to depict Western characters not as stock figures in shoot-'em-ups but as believable human beings struggling with historical forces." The New York Times

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 218 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; First Edition edition (September 13, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395325110
• ISBN-13: 978-0395325117
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,048,736 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars End of an Era, October 7, 2006

By 

Douglas S. Wood "Vicarious Life" (Monona, WI) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Fair Land, Fair Land (Paperback)

In Fair Land, Fair Land, A.B. Guthrie wrapped up the Old West part of his 6 novel series of the West. Guthrie had actually skipped over the period from 1845 to 1870 when he originally went from The Way West to These Thousand Hills. He was later convinced in 1982 to go back and finish the tale of Dick Summers.

Guthrie places Summers in an extended autumn both of his own life and that of the old Indian way of life. Although Summers is over 70 by the end of the tale, he never really quite gets old - just a little 'ganted up'. Summers finds love with Teal Eye (Boone Caudill's foolishly rejected spouse) and companionship with Higgins - Hig - as they drift along in an idyllic life (if living on the prairie in the shadow of the Montana mountains can really be an idyll). Summers also meets up with his former trail mate Boone Caudill for a reckoning over Caudill's murder of Jim Deakins, but that denouement becomes almost anti-climactic.

The telling is somewhat uneven (a stint living in a gold mining town seems like something stuck on to the story for no particular good reason), but Guthrie's love of Montana is evident in his description of the Bitteroot Valley. I literally was looking for an atlas to see just where this beautiful place was (and is).

But the idyll does come to an end. The game gradually gets harder and harder to find, whites intrude more closely, and finally the soldiers come to establish a fort. The book ends with the Marias River Massacre. Perhaps the worst slaughter of Indians by the US Army, the history is related in Larry McMurtry's recent offering 'Oh, What a Slaughter'. Guthrie includes the shouted warning by one of the white scouts 'wrong camp!', but the soldiers don't really care and shoot down these peaceable Piegan Blackfoot because they were at hand and the hostiles had already fled.

There's no way to make of this era a happy story and Guthrie doesn't try. A fine ending to the Dick Summers trilogy. Highly recommended.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Story Continues, October 2, 2008

By 

Rocannon MacGregor "zenfire" (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fair Land, Fair Land (Paperback)

If you liked Big Sky you will enjoy the ongoing tale presented here. Guthrie presents a smoothly paced story of the last days of the mountain men, their challenges, their friends, and their women.

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, October 3, 2011

By 

Peter A. Marconi (Phoenix, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fair Land, Fair Land (Paperback)

Guthrie's continuation of his first two masterpieces is disappointing and regretable. Its almost as if he looked in the future and watched Dances with Wolves, a shallow film at best. No one of any education doubts the abuse Native Americans suffered; yet Guthrie's idyllic discription of camp life with Teal Eye, Higgins, and his wife is something for Good Housekeeping. While a knowledgible reader could accept this as an author's license, it is his shallow character follow-through (principly Boone Caudill) that makes this book so disappointing. With Big Sky Guthrie created, in Stegner's words, "an American archtype;" a complex youth, fashioned by a harsh and impoverished up-bringing, with a purely American mind-set (as Tocqueville recognized)run-away to the American frontier. A youth so fashioned by the beauty and harshness of nature, he rejects human nature itself and civilization to the point that even the Native Americans shun him. It is fair to say that no western European, raised in Europe could have become a Boone Caudill.

It is this character that I had so hoped Guthrie would continue with. We are teased and led at the end of Big Sky to speculate that Caudill, realizing his error, his humanity and in-humanity is moved to some suffering and redemption. It would seem that 30 years later, Guthrie hadnt the inclination or interest in picking up where he left off. It would have been understood that Caudill came to end as described in Fair Land, Fair, Land, had we known what he suffered, or failed to learn in the intervening years before he met up with Summers. Instead, his most complex character is really never present in the book. Are we to understand that he regressed even further because of his terrible deed; or he was no more than an animal to begin with? Guthrie leaves us hanging and it is a shame.