The Wandering Hill (The Berrybender Narratives, 2) - Softcover

McMurtry, Larry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743262700 ISBN 13: 9780743262705

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2005

Synopsis

The second volume in Larry McMurtry's four-part historical epic featuring the Berrybender family as they continue their journey through the West during the 1830s.

In The Wandering Hill, Larry McMurtry continues the story of Tasmin Berrybender and her eccentric family in the still unexplored Wild West of the 1830s. Their journey is one of exploration, beset by difficulties, tragedies, the desertion of trusted servants, and the increasing hardships of day-to-day survival in a land where nothing can be taken for granted. By now, Tasmin is married to the elusive young mountain man Jim Snow (the "Sin Killer").
On his part, Jim is about to discover that in taking the outspoken, tough-minded, stubbornly practical young aristocratic woman into his teepee he has bitten off more than he can chew. Still, theirs is a great love affair and dominates this volume of Larry McMurtry's The Berrybender Narratives, in which Tasmin gradually takes center stage as her father loses his strength and powers of concentration, and her family goes to pieces stranded in the hostile wilderness.

The Wandering Hill (which refers to a powerful and threatening legend in local Indian folklore) is at once literature on a grand scale and riveting entertainment by a master storyteller.

About this title

Review:

The Wandering Hill, the second volume in Larry McMurtry's The Berrybender Narratives, retains the humour of the first instalment, Sin Killer, while establishing a more meditative mood. Picking up where Sin Killer left off, The Wandering Hill finds noble English family the Berrybenders waiting out the oncoming winter at a high plains trading post, delaying their hunting expedition through the frontier-era American west. Tight confines force the spirited, bickering Berrybenders to contend with one another, as well as an assortment of colourful attendants and raw trappers. Conflict has arisen between fiery and very pregnant heroine Tasmin and her stoical, evangelical mountain man husband Jim Snow, aka Sin Killer. Selfish, randy patriarch Lord Berrybender, having lost a leg, seven toes, and three fingers thus far on their journey (though not his "favorite appendage"), is slowly losing his sanity. Malicious youngest child Mary begins an odd pseudo-sexual friendship with naturalist Piet Van Wely, while "foppish" heir Bobbety's no less ambiguous relationship with priest Father Geoffrin inspires his father to accidentally stick his son in the eye with a fork. In between many such self-inflicted disasters, three children are born, fierce native tribes attack, a man is sewn into a buffalo carcass, and many lives are lost, often in the presence of a strange, mobile hill whose legendary appearance signals impending doom. McMurtry, meanwhile, continues the momentum he built with Sin Killer, offering graceful storytelling, wonderfully dimensional realism and deadpan wit. The wintry Wandering Hill, however, diverges from Sin Killer's madcap activity to further consider the inner lives of many of its splendid characters. McMurtry will have his fans clamouring for an answer, though delighting in his wandering path toward a resolution. --Ross Doll, Amazon.com

Review:

"In this tale of the exploration, and exploitation, of the West, McMurtry is telling us something about our checkered past -- and perhaps about our uncertain present."
-- People

"Larry McMurtry may well be the most reliable American novelist of his generation...The Wandering Hill is full of rich incident and provocative people."
-- The New York Times Book Review

"The Wandering Hill exhibits McMurtry's usual feel for the vast skies and spaces of the American West."
-- Texas Monthly

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0743262700
• ISBN 13: 9780743262705
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320