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Summary
Summary
In The Wandering Hill, Larry McMurtry continues the story of Tasmin Berrybender and her family in the still unexplored Wild West of the 1830s, at the point in time when the Mountain Men and trappers like Jim Bridger and Kit Carson (both lively characters in the book), though still alive, are already legendary figures, when the journey of Lewis and Clark is still a living memory, while the painter George Catlin is at work capturing the Mandan tribes just before they are eliminated by the incursion of the white man and smallpox, and when the clash between the powerful Indian tribes of the Missouri and the encroaching white Americans is about to turn into full-blown tragedy.
Amidst all this, the Berrybender family -- English, eccentric, wealthy, and fiercely out of place -- continues its journey of exploration, although 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.
Abandoning their luxurious steamer, which is stuck in the ice near the Knife River, they make their way overland to the confluence of the Missouri and the Yellowstone, to spend the winter in conditions of siege at the trading post of Pierre Boisdeffre, right smack in what is, from their point of view, the middle of nowhere. By now, Tasmin is a married woman, or as good as, and about to be a mother, living with the elusive young mountain man Jim Snow (The Sin Killer), and not only going to have his child, but to discover that he has a whole other Indian family he hasn't told her about.
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 -- Tasmin doesn't hesitate to answer back, use the name of the Lord in vain, and strike out, though she is taken aback when the quiet Jim actually strikes her.
Still, theirs is a great love affair, lived out in conditions of great risk, and dominates this volume of Larry McMurtry's 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, surrounded by interesting savages with ideas of their own and mountain men who are all of the "strong, silent type" of later Western legend, and hardly less savage than the Indians.
From the murder of the iced-in steamship's crew to the appearance of the Partezon, a particularly blood-thirsty Sioux warrior with a band of over two hundred followers (the Partezon thoughtfully buries one of Lord Berrybender's servants alive in a gutted buffalo, ordering his feet and hands to be chopped off so he will fit into the body cavity, to see if the man can get out), 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.
Author Notes
Larry McMurtry, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among other awards, is the author of twenty-four novels, two collections of essays, two memoirs, more than thirty screenplays, & an anthology of modern Western fiction. He lives in Archer City, Texas.
(Publisher Provided)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This is the second volume in McMurtry's four-book series the Berrybender Narratives, following last year's Sin Killer. Set in 1833 along the banks of the Yellowstone River, the comedic melodrama mixes unwashed mountain men with an arrogant, obnoxious and uncouth family of English aristocrats in a saga of high violence, low morals and lusty copulation. Lord Berrybender and his brood of selfish bumbling children, servants and mistress are touring the American West, shooting every animal in sight. The lord is a one-legged, drunken satyr who cares only for his own pleasure, and pokes his son's eye out with a fork. The rest of the family is just as self-centered and irresponsible. Eldest daughter Tasmin, a vulgar, opinionated woman, is married to enigmatic mountain man Jim Snow, known as the Sin Killer for his fervent brutality in the punishment of sin (not his own, of course). He cannot understand why Tasmin willfully refuses to be more like his two Indian wives, silent, obedient and submissive. Still, their love is passionate and so are their fistfights. The English group and a bunch of smelly, hairy mountain men winter over at a trading post through months of quarrels, meanness and downright coarse behavior, while marauding Sioux under the command of a white man-hating war chief called the Partezon gruesomely torture and slaughter any white they can catch. McMurtry tosses in famous hunters and mountain men like Hugh Glass, Kit Carson and Tom Fitzpatrick, plus a buffalo stampede, grizzly bears and an Indian ambush, but these are just props to support the soap-opera antics of the Berrybender clan. A few folks manage to get themselves killed, but there are plenty of annoying Englishmen left to people the next two volumes. (May 13) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Lord Berrybender and brood continue their western exploration, in this second in a four-part series (Sin Killer, 2002). Tongue still wedged firmly in cheek, McMurtry throws his supremely confident band of aristocrats up against the toughest challenges, including a buffalo stampede, hostile Indians, wretched weather, and bloody-minded mountain men. None is rougher than Lady Tasmin Berrybender's handsome husband Jim Snow, the gifted trapper and brutally fundamental Christian whose distaste for Tasmin's erudite and occasionally profane chatter leads him to paste her one in the kisser. Two actually, one to the temple and one to the mouth, her pregnancy notwithstanding. Leaving Tasmin to ponder the error of her ways and the mystery of his, Jim strikes out alone, to clear his head and give his ears a rest from the incessant prattling of the diminished but still large brood of aristos and their retainers. Their river transport having been crushed by the frozen Missouri and the crew having been hacked to pieces by angry natives, the Berrybenders have holed up for the winter at a trading post where time and pregnant bellies hang rather heavy. Tasmin, irritably sorting out her feelings for Jim, has the ardent attention of tongue-tied Kit Carson and the artistic attention of painter George Catlin, who has in mind an epic American allegorical tableau featuring Tasmin and her father's equally gravid ex-mistress Vicky. Meanwhile, the errant Jim Snow decides to reclaim his two Ute wives, who will show Tasmin the right and silent way to go about being a wife. Alas, the senior and more competent wife has died in his absence, but the teenaged number two proves to be a superb nanny after Tasmin is delivered of a son, Montague. Will Jim warm to his heir? Will he deal with those pesky anger management issues? Will Tasmin learn to control her tongue? Will she come to terms with bigamy? Will there ever be a meeting of the minds between the overcultured Europeans and the oversimplifying Americans? Big issues masquerading as light fun. Highly entertaining. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
This is the second volume in a projected four-part series following the aristocratic Berrybender family as they traverse various frontier river systems in the 1830s. As in the first installment, Sin Killer [BKL Ap 1 02], the feisty, passionate Tasmin Berrybender and her enigmatic, primitive husband, Jim Snow, occupy the center of the story. These two individuals are the most compelling and memorable of McMurtry's characters since Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call graced the pages of Lonesome Dove (1985). Now they and a fascinating cast of both fictional and historical characters interact in a wonderful pageant that re-creates the era of the mountain men who hunted and trapped along the upper Missouri and its tributaries. McMurtry offers a full range of Native American personalities, from chronically hostile Blackfeet to half-assimilated Utes to a frightening, sociopathic Lakota. The historical characters include a youthful Kit Carson, a grizzled Hugh Glass, and Pomp Charbonneau, the son of Sacagawea. The latter was educated in Europe but is irresistibly drawn back to the frontier, and his efforts to navigate between two worlds are particularly poignant. The landscape is stunningly beautiful, but the beauty is often disrupted by spasmodic, gruesome violence. Nonetheless, this novel is an engrossing, exciting, and sometimes heart-rending saga of the American West that shows McMurtry at his best; and it will be in heavy library demand. --Jay Freeman
Library Journal Review
In the second installment of "The Berrybender Narratives," a tetralogy that opened with Sin Killer, McMurtry continues the saga of the aristocratic Lord Berrybender and his entourage. Having abandoned the luxury steamer on which they traveled up the Missouri River because it was stuck in the ice, the party of 17 family members, servants, and numerous hangers-on waits out the winter at a trading post on the Yellowstone before moving on so that Lord Berrybender can shoot as many different animals as possible. The plot of this Western is lively, with Indian attacks, a buffalo stampede, bears, and the birth of three babies standing in counterpoint to Lord Berrybender's increasingly bizarre behavior. McMurtry's respect for the unspoiled wilderness he portrays so compellingly is clear. Yet except for eldest daugher Tasmin, the characters lack depth. There are so many secondary characters that the cast list is a necessity rather than a convenience, and everyone's preoccupation with sex is off-putting. Although this novel can stand alone, the reader would be better served by reading Sin Killer first. Recommended only for public libraries where McMurtry has loyal fans-this is no Lonesome Dove. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/03.]-Ann Fleury, Tampa-Hillsborough P.L. Cooperative, FL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.