Customer Reviews

Tough Trip Through Paradise 1878-1879

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This memoir reads more like a novel than any memoir I've ever read, with a plot that revolves around Garicia's survival and fortunes in both business (trading, trapping) and in love. Garcia's prose voice is also singular and entertaining, like Twain crossed with Gabby Hayes. And for lovers of tragedy you will not find tragedy more heartbreakingly rendered in any novel you are ever likely to read. Notice the other reviews where readers say they want to buy more copies to give to friends, and those who said that they didn't want the story to end. I can vouch for these sentiments as they were my first impressions upon finishing this gritty and moving story.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The newer version of this book (which includes "1878-1879" in its title) for some reason does not include photos included in the original paperback version. These photos include shots of Garcia, his wives and love interests, and his territory, and they are valuable to the reader if for no other reason than they depict the beautiful dress of the women in the tribes Garcia encountered.

In the sixties I was in a dentist's office in Huntsville, Alabama, with my four young daughters. I picked up one of the better magazines, Esquire or something, and started an excerpt from "Tough Trip Through Paradise." With attention drawn in several directions, you can't usually get into a magazine story. Suddenly I was so caught up in Mr. Garcia's adventures that I tried to read faster and faster before whichever child was finished in the dentist chair. I did finish the part of the book the magazine finished and very soon, perhaps before we went home, I visited the library and checked out the exact book. I have bought by special order Mr. Garcia's journal and given it to a library, my father-in-law, and many others. I have it on order now to give to a neighbor. My father-in-law, who scoffed at gifts and other books, quoted from it and re-read it until his death. For once in my marriage I pleased him! About the book itself and Andrew Garcia: He knew how to write, did he ever. I still quote passages from the book to myself -- (these aren't exact quotes, ". . . I'm not too good but I don't steal horses." "The young maidens know they will marry an older man with means to support them but first they will have a fling with the young bucks." "I notice the squaws want their dresses made with buttons down the front." It is so simply written that it is elegant. I believe every word is true, he did not need to elaborate, every day was exciting.

I read this book in the early 1970's when I was the author's age, and have never forgotten it. Andrew Garcia writes with bittersweet longing for a time when adventure was freely available for those foolhardy enough to risk all. He writes in imperfect, but colorful prose about simpler times. Villains humorously drawl, "I'll plug ya if ya move." His self-depracating wit sounds like a real Huckleberry Finn in the wild west. The center piece of the tale is the massacre of the Nez Perce tribe by the U.S. Army; which Garcia relates from the first hand account of his beloved first wife (a Nez Perce herself). Fireside desire for beautiful native women in isolated wilderness, tempered by his Catholic background make for great romantic tension. Whether exactly true or not does not matter. It is a wonderful story of adventure, love,and sadness. I look forward to re-reading it to escape back to paradise.

Andrew Garcia was a "woolly Texan from Spanish America" who found himself on the Montana frontier in 1876, at the age of 23. These are his colorful reminiscences of his Nez Perce and Pend'Oreille wives, and hardships undergone among dubious characters.

I don't know that I agree with Ms Garrett that every word in it is true. Garcia wrote it towards the end of a long life, when he was nicknamed "the Squaw Kid" and dined out on these stories.

However the essence of the book rings true. It will strike a chord with anyone whose heart has been by the lonely beauty of the High Plains and by longing for what once was, not so long ago, and is now out of reach forever.

this is a great story from one who lived with the indians during the time before their decline. this book is hard to put down.

Like so many commentators here, I read this book a long time ago, then loaned my copy to someone and never got it back. I have Google searched many times trying to find a copy so I could read it again.

The thing that struck me most in this re-reading is the great pervading sense of humor that runs through the book despite the difficult and often dangerous life as a white man living among Indians in Montana in the late eighteen hundreds. When this book arrived, I was reading 'Broadway Nights'; a humorous book about a gay pianist (not pronounced pee-anist). Both books made me laugh out loud despite being at polar extremes as far as life style is concerned.

There are unforgettable moments in this book; the fat squaw and the drunk warrior; the bear in the tent. Some made me laugh hysterically, and a few made me shiver with awe and horror.

Sadly, this printing does not include the photos printed in the original book. They brought everything into sharp, and, at times painful, clarity. Poignant reminders of the past and beautiful Indian girls, now long gone. Just read it.

the 1976 edition has awesome pictures of garcia, his indian wives, and shots of the landscapes through which he and in-who-lise traveled. the new edition is super cheap and doesnt have any of the pictures. it also has horribly ugly formatting. i highly recommend getting the old version if you can find one; the pictures are amazing and its unfortunate the new publishers were too cheap to include them.

Bennett Stein obviously did some pretty heavy editing to cut Garcia's manuscript down to novel size, but the final product flows perfectly. Stein swears that all the words are Garcia's and that's half the charm of the story. The choice of words, figures of speech, and turns of phrase that Garcia uses are things that a modern Western writer would never think to use. You don't hear people talk like this any more. I once tried to read Buffalo Bill's autobiography, and put it down permanently when I came to the part, complete with engraved illustration, entitled "Shooting my First Indian". If that was the "old school" western, writers have swung to the opposite extreme nowadays with what I might call "new age" westerns. In them, depending on the desired story line, the Native American (never an Indian, much less an Injun as Garcia puts it) is either a pathetic and helpless victim of white oppression, or some kind of transcendent metaphysical being so in touch with the Earth that he merely prays and the animals walk up to him to be lovingly killed.

Garcia's manuscript blows all these stereotypes to hell. He spent the better part (according to him) of his life in a world where "Injuns" and whites representing a very wide spectrum of faith and morality were all angling to get the advantage of each other (or avoid each other) in a world that was new to all of its participants. The Indians we meet are real people with complex characters well-drawn, rather than the side-show targets or enlightened saints of other Westerns. Likewise, the white men (there are no white women) range from honest to foolish to despicable, but are always interesting characters. There is no "The Indians this" or "The Whites that" in this story. It's all about individual people making their own individual decisions about what to do at any given moment. Sometimes their choices are noble, sometimes they are cowardly, and sometimes they are horrifically cruel.

The beginnings of limits in the wild West are just starting to appear in this 1879 story. The gold miners have already mined out their gulch. The soldiers live in "strong teepees" and call up reinforcements on the "click-clack". Bozeman is fading as a trading center as steamboats push farther up the Missouri. Everywhere in life, interesting things happen on the edges and borders. In Garcia's life, we have two major borders -- the border between the White world and the Indian world, of course, and also the border between the free, open, and lawless world, and civilization with all it entails.

The historical facts covered in this book have been written plenty of times by others, but Garcia personalizes every camp site, every confrontation in the wilderness, and every battle. It's one thing to read about the Big Hole battle in a history book, with its formulaic recitations of the positions of the opposing forces, the leadership of both sides, and the general progression of the battle throughout the day. It's quite another to wonder what the soldier was thinking who smashed a teenage girl in the face with the butt of his rifle, breaking her teeth. When he got out of the army, did he go back home to his wife somewhere and look at her face differently? We may read in some other book that some of the graves of the Indians were looted. "Looted" is just a word. But when we read here of that same girl, the only survivor of that battle amongst her entire family, going back and finding her father's grave, torn up and with his bones out of it, and hear her cry her heart out, we learn what looting a grave really means.

Tough Trip Through Paradise is one of the most personal narratives of the old West, and it's certainly the most gripping and best-written personal narrative. As I read it, I kept thinking, "this can't be true", but Stein and Garcia assure me that it is, and I believe them. It's one hell of a story.

I had read this book some 40 years ago and thought it was great! Recently I purchased it on Amazon and read it again; even better the second time around. Provides fascinating insight to a time of historical importance to the American West.

I read this book many years ago and then lost my copy of it, so I ordered another one on Amazon. This is the most moving book I have ever read. If you're into non-fiction westerns, this is the book for you. I found the first half a tad slow but the second half was fantastic. To this day, when I think about it, it almost brings tears to my eyes. The story was written from the memoirs of Andrew Garcia, a scout for Custer and tells of his adventures traveling through the west with his native american wives. I loaned this book to a friend and he shares my enthusiasm for it.