Customer Reviews

The Last Canyon: A Novel

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1 star:		(4)

 

 

As John Wesley Powell and his crew of nine follow the Green and Colorado Rivers through uncharted territory into the Grand Canyon in 1869, Vernon imbues them with so much energy and strength that this fictional account of their journey feels like the real thing--more like a well-written memoir than a flight of imagination. His depictions of the canyons, mesas, geological strata, and the always changing river are so precise and vivid that they feel more like great photographs than prose. His descriptions of the heat and privation have the intensity of old sermons of hellfire and damnation.

With a lyricism as masculine and vigorous as the characters of his story, Vernon tells of two parallel, and eventually intersecting, journeys--the famous journey of John Wesley Powell and his crew on the river, and the fictional journey of a family of Paiute (Shivwits) Indians across the high mesas, as they try to reclaim a daughter which the father sold to Mormons in exchange for two guns. Vernon alternates these narratives in successive sections, bringing the ironies of the two journeys into sharp focus. The Powell expedition fights the forces of nature and is often at the mercy of the elements, struggling with equipment and scientific instruments, and in danger of running out of food. The Shivwits, on the other hand, are in communion with nature, comfortable in their belief that nature will provide, as it always has--their struggle, of course, being to preserve their lands and culture.

Vernon is a remarkable writer, equally adept at all aspects of writing--action sequences on the river, dialogues ranging from humorous to rancorous, insights into the characters' thinking, and a faithful adherence to the writing style of the period. His ability to present very different descriptions of the same geographical features, as seen separately by the Paiutes and explorers, is nothing short of amazing. This is a beautifully written, very masculine story of exploration and cultural conflict, one that should not be missed by anyone fascinated by tales of outdoor adventure and exploration. Mary Whipple

This could have been a great book. John Vernon obviously expended a lot of effort to weave the known facts into his novel and to create memorable impressions of each character from the small body of available historical knowledge. But John Vernon's easy slide into vulgarity as he creates the personalities and interactions of the characters was a big disappointment to me. I compelled myself to finish the book, mostly driven by my fascination for the Colorado River basin and its exploration. But being unwilling to contemplate that anyone else might wallow through the salacious bogs offensively dumped into this story, I threw the book in the recycling bin as soon as I was done.

This strong, beautiful book's sophisticated prose and subtle character explorations make it the rare fact-based novel that actually convinces readers and illuminates a moment in history. It may not be the summer beach read some of Amazon's reviewers seem to have expected, but it is much, much more.

This book was terrible. I couldn't finish it. The dialoge was sophomoric. There wasnt any character development. A complete waste of time.

This was the most irritatingly written novel I've ever read. Not being the type to easily give up on a book, I decided to give it 100 pages to see if it improved; I gave up on page 44, but before I did I scanned pages further along to make absolutley sure. Now, some would argue that I hadn't give the book enough time to develop, but to be frank, the writing was so bad, I had to stop for the sake of my sanity. I was going to put the book up for sale on Amazon.com, but there appears to be a glut of used copies of this book. I wonder how many others felt the way I did.

One can only hope the the Last Canyon is Mr. Vernon's last book. Flat characters; flat imagery; sophomoric dialogue; silly, forced, disconnected scenes: the genuis here is that one truly celebrates the end of Powell's journey becasue it also coincides with the end of Mr. Vernon's prose. One wishes Mr. Powell's journey had ended 300 hundred pages sooner.