Series: Desert Island Dracula Library | Publication Date: December 1999
Title: The Shoulder of Shasta.
Publisher: British Library, Historical Print Editions
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British Library Stoker, Bram; 1895. 235 p. ; 8º. 012628.k.20.
This review is from: The Shoulder of Shasta (Hardcover)
In 1895, less than two years before the publication of `Dracula' Bram Stoker wrote this now forgotten novella about a romance set against the background of the mountains in the West Coast, USA. It is almost unbelievable that Stoker, the creator of THE Count, wrote a love story set in America, but it is true.
The name of the book refers to Mount Shasta, located in northern California. Rich English heiress Esse is told by her doctor that she should spend the coming summer on this high mountainside to recover her health, and is sent to the cottage with her mother. Esse, after some adventures including the fight with wild bears, falls for Grizzly Dick, American guide and bear-hunter.
This short novel starts slowly with picturesque descriptions of the Californian mountains, but the book's story gets really faster and more interesting in the melodramatic latter half, where romance becomes more complicated because of the changed location and some misunderstanding.
Though Bram Stoker himself visited San Francisco as business manager of acclaimed actor Henry Irving in 1893, he most probably has never climbed Mount Shasta. Considering that, the scenery of the book in the first half is colorful and credible. The romance part is decently done, if slightly hasty, and one episode about the bears is gripping. (Esse, like Mina Harker, is not a heroine who would easily faint.)
Probably, if it were not for the name of Stoker, `Shoulder of Shasta' which has never been published in America until 2000, would have remained as obscure item in big public libraries that few would notice. As it is, the book, written in more straightforward narrative than that of `Dracula,' would offer a good chance to understand Stoker, who is usually remembered as the writer of supernatural novels like `The Jewel of Seven Stars' and of course, `Dracula.'
`The Shoulder of Shasta' from Desert Island Books gives concise but informative introduction and helpful annotation by Alan Johnson.
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