Tough Trip Through Paradise [Paperback]

Andrew Garcia (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Comstock Book Distributors (June 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0891740082
• ISBN-13: 978-0891740087
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #858,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent, June 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Tough Trip Through Paradise (Paperback)

I was hooked on this autobiography from the moment I opened it to see if I might like it. The first page has the following: "Montana, 1878 - Andrew Garcia left the army at 23 and went out with a party of traders to make a living among the indians in the Montana wilderness. Soon he acquired the name "Squaw Man" and an indian wife - the first of three. Indians, frontiersmen, traders, trappers and the "Boys in Blue' - all were part of his "paradise" between two worlds and two eras of History in the old West. This is his story, discovered in a dynamite box in the cabin where he died at the age of 88."

And after the first paragraph of the introduction I was hooked: "In 1948 I found the manuscript from which this book was written. It was stored in dynamite boxes, packed solid in the heavy waxed paper that powder comes in - several thousand pages of legal-sized paper, both hand writtena and typed. Also in the collection were newspaper clippings showing Andrew Garcia at meetings of the Society of Montana Pioneers through the 1930's........"

Magnificently edited. A wonderful adventure story, wonderfully written and very readable, about one man's unusual life, which, in retrospect, in many ways was very priveliged... a way of living which could never be duplicated..

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully told truth of a man & his beloved Native wife., May 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Tough Trip Through Paradise (Paperback)

An incredibly moving glipse of an ordinary man's effort to live -- not just survive -- in the rugged wilds of the Montana West. As life unfolds, the biographic tale reveals a deeper, more spiritual quest for quintessential American values: truth, fairness, and peace -- in life and in love, among many different people from many diverse cultures. An odessey encompassing a tableau of Native American peoples, and an equally complex canvass of European settlers, French trappers, and a stalwart Texas-bred Mexican-American Westerner as hero. Literally too honest and good a story to be mere fiction. I read a dog-earred, creased, many times read borrowed paperback copy. I'd really like to own my own hardback, and a bunch of paperbacks to give as gifts to many others.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Incredible Time Machine, April 19, 2002

By 

Roger E. Robichaud (Bozeman, MT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tough Trip Through Paradise (Paperback)

Reading this book had a deep effect on my life. When it was first given to me I only had a vague idea about Montana. It was somewhere up there. I started reading it and it shocked me. The writing was not quite proper grammatically correct english you see, it irritated me so much that I stopped and put it away. But I had been hooked and I went back to it. This second time around I just could'nt put it down and wish it did'nt end. The dream of Montana became stuck in me.

In 1980 I had the good fortune to find my way to Bozeman and by an unimaginable stroke of luck I even met Ben Stein the editor of what had become my favorite book. Tough Trip Through Paradise is very much also the work of Ben Stein. Ben had gone through the original found writings to form the book. Andrew Garcia and Ben Stein are now gone. But the remains of the story are still here with us. The site of Fort Ellis just east of Bozeman has been excavated and located. The building where Walter Cooper outfitted Garcia is still here on Main Street.The Musselshell still flows.If you take a trip to the Big Hole Battlefield monument you'll see the markings of the battle. A photo of In-Who-Lise hangs in the museum but there's no connection made with the book.

Somehow Andrew Garcia and Ben Stein were able to conserve the essence of the 1870's and take us to that time. Not by telling us how it was but by making us feel it. This was their genius. It just seeps into you. Sit, read and just let yourself experience those times. The west as it was, the indians, and others who played their part will be changed forever in your mind because you will have been there.