The Run to Gitche Gumee: A Novel [Hardcover]

Robert F. Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2001

The Run to Gitche Gumee is pure Jones: an outrageous outdoor adventure heightened by ribald humor, violence, sex, pitch-perfect dialog, unforgettably eccentric characters, and a riveting plot. Part One opens as two boyhood friends on the cusp of manhood - Ben, who is about to go off to the Korean War, and Harry, who is college-bound to become a doctor - set off on the final adventure of their youth: a canoe trip down the Firesteel River to Lake Superior, also known as Gitche Gumee, or the Big-Sea-Water by the native Ojibwa. Armed with flyrods and shotguns, they plan to fish and hunt their way downriver, relishing their last blast of freedom in the great outdoors. But their idyllic ride becomes surrealistic - as unexpected encounters with millionaires, college girls, hipsters, and lunatics are by turns titillating, nerve-wracking and deadly. Part Two takes place fifty years later, when Ben and Harry, now confronting illness and marital strife, decide to recreate their canoe trip as a last hurrah. This time the bravado of youth is replaced with the wisdom of their years and the pains of their pasts. This time they have little left to lose. (5 3/4 x 8 1/2, 292 pages)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

From the author of such popular novels as Blood Sport (1974) and Tie My Bones to Her Back (1996) comes this smartly constructed novel of two men whose friendship spans a half-century. The story begins in 1950, when Ben and Harry, a couple of Wisconsin kids, set out on a canoe trip to Lake Superior, otherwise known (to the Chippewa) as Gitche Gumee. It's supposed to be their last great adventure before real life kicks in: Ben is about to be sent to fight in Korea, and Harry's off to college. Fifty years later, the story continues: Ben and Harry, now in their sixties, re-create their Lake Superior trip but soon discover that nothing, no matter how seemingly permanent, stays the same. This is a boisterous novel, rambunctious and loud, with off-color dialogue, off-kilter characters, and a whole lot of pure, undiluted fun. Yet at its center, behind all the excitement and laughter, it is a delicate, rather touching tale of memory and friendship and the melancholy inevitability of change. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"THE RUN is a stunner, a remarkable tale of high adventure in a style so readable and fun that I couldn't put it down."--Elmore Leonard

"The Run to Gitche Gumee is vintage Robert F. Jones--a rollicking, politically incorrect, testosterone-laden adventure tale. First it's a story of the swaggering immortality of youth, tempered finally by the horrors of war and by the inexorable passing of the seasons. Then it's a story of the retrospection of old age, of recapturing old friendships, old rhythms, through the timeless twin solaces of fishing and hunting. Throughout it is infused with Jones's particular erudition, his specific knowledge of history and natural history, and of exactly how things work. This is wonderful novel--rich, colorful, funny, and poignant."
--James Fergus, author of 1,000 White Women

"In the tradition of Ernest Hemingway's finest stories, Robert F. Jones' The Run to Gitche Gumee is a wonderfully human and readable novel about war, wilderness, friendship, and growing older. From the wilds of northern Wisconsin, to behind enemy lines in war-torn Korea, The Run to Gitche Gumee is the best novel to date by America's best writer of high-action literary fiction." --Howard Frank Mosher, author of A Stranger in the Kingdom

"The Run to Gitche Gumee is a tough, funny, moving tale that fairly hums with Jones' enormous love of life, and love and knowledge of the outdoors; it is a wild and vivid ride to the place we are all on a run to." --Charles Gaines, author of A Family Place

"Jones has crafted an fast-moving novel that rides the swirling currents of his own delightful, madcap imagination. Gitche Gumee is a novel of life and adventure, wry humor and grim truth by America's best outdoor action writer." -- John Holt, author of Coyote Nowhere

"A well-told, wildly plotted tale that is rich with Jones' knowledge of how life outdoors keeps some souls alive even when the going is rougher than they planned." -- Gray's Sporting Journal

"The Run to Gitche Gumee has stirred the literary ranks as only Jones could...you're sure to be lured by the compelling storyline as Jones sinks his hook deeper with every passing paragraph." --Sports Afield

"Jones provides lavish descriptions of the natural world and pays witness to man's every-growing distance from it." --Publishers Weekly

"This is Tom and Huck, the Eisenhower years. The Run to Gitche Gumee fits in among books by writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Elmore Leonard...Jones, an accomplished author of sportsman's literature, captures two boys' Gitche Gumee, and takes us to the river to remember our own." --Midwest Living

"A great, page-turning read." --Big Sky Journal

"A well-told, wildly plotted tale that is rich with Jones' knowledge of how life outdoors keeps some souls alive even when the going is rougher than they planned."--Gray's Sporting Journal

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 292 pages
• Publisher: The Lyons Press; 1st edition (December 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585744069
• ISBN-13: 978-1585744060
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,139,652 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fun-House Ride!, December 27, 2001

By 

Bart Morris (West Rupert, VT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Run to Gitche Gumee: A Novel (Hardcover)

If you thought the canoe trip in DELIVERANCE was a fun-house ride, wait til you take this one. On their way down the wild Firesteel River in northern Wisconsin, this novel's protagonists encounter huge trout, ferocious rapids, a ravenous black bear, a trio of Dillinger-era bank robbers on the lam, a pair of delectable college girls, a giant, fish-eating salamander, two snooty business tycoons, and as much slam-bang action as a Special Ops firefight in Afghanistan. There's never a dull moment on THE RUN TO GITCHE GUMEE, an evocatively-written, cleverly-plotted book that (to paraphrase Dickens) contains more excitement than nine monkeys with their tails tied together. This is a must-read book for any outdoor action aficionado.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Flawed but not forgotten, January 12, 2003

By 

"ineering" (Canberra, ACT Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Run to Gitche Gumee: A Novel (Hardcover)

One of my favourite pieces of fiction of all time is Jones' "Blood Sport" so I came to "The Run..." with great expectations. I loved the wild outdoors and the coming of age themes that were so cleverly blended by Jones' wonderful command of language, invention and humour.

In Blood Sport, Jones creates a fantastic world, entirely believable and consistent within itself. The characters have an existence of their own and demand your respect and attention. Sadly, I did not find this to be the case with The Run..

As to be expected, the descriptions of huntin' shootin' and fishin' are up to Jones' usual high standard. It's what he does best. For me however, where the book failed was in the realisation of some his characters and my inability to suspend disbelief. The book centers on two boyhood mates who repeat an early trip down a Wisconsin river to Superior later on in life after all the failures and disappointments of their lives have been manifest.

The nitty gritty descriptions of the river trips really took me back to my own river experiences in Mn, Wi and Quetico when I lived and worked in Rochester Mn some years back. Though I'm an Aussie tried and true, I fell in love with the North Land and still hanker for retirement in a cabin by a lake up in the North Woods.

All that apart, for me where the book fails is that Jones seems unable to reconcile the adventure he weaves for his subjects with a believeable world. Perhaps it's because these characters are all too familiar and we know in our hearts that they just wouldn't do the things they do. Perhaps the characters themselves are more caricatures than fully painted pictures. Certanly that's true for the women depicted in the story. In addition the plotline is too convenient, the parallels between the events in both journeys too close. At any rate, for me, the sum of the parts failed to add up to a whole and deliver the satisfaction I had expected.

I'm not sorry I bought the book because Jones is always worth a read but it's not the best he's capable of.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Thelma & Louise with Rods, January 22, 2003

By 

S. Towers "Pituophis" (Palo Cedro, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Run to Gitche Gumee: A Novel (Hardcover)

I read "Blood Sport: A Journey up the Hassayampa" when I was about 12 or 13, and it knocked my socks off. I hadn't thought about it much for the past couple of decades, then recently decided to reread it. It held up, and then some.

Thus inspired, I picked up a copy of "The Run to Gitche Gumee." Large sections made for enjoyable reading, but whole chapters were utterly unbeliveable -- but played straight by Jones. In the end, it was Thelma & Louise for aging outdoorsmen.