From Publishers Weekly
Hugo and Nebula Award-winner Haldeman (The Forever War) reworks classic SF themes in this odd and unsatisfying pastiche of travel narrative, alternate history, American Indian lore and adventure story. In 1879, Rosa Tolliver, a college-educated blueblood, marries a wealthy man who turns out to be a brute. She flees her Philadelphia mansion with her 14-year-old son, Daniel, and the two of them make their way to Dodge City, Kans. Rosa retrospectively describes the trip in incredible detail: the modes of transportation they took; the people they met; the books she read. With each carefully placed detail, Rosa weaves the tapestry of her life, and among the threads, she hints at a destiny: something extraordinary happens to her, and each book she reads, each decision she makes, in retrospect has something to do with this destiny. Her stay in Dodge City lasts only four years, and she and Daniel flee again when a Pinkerton detective tracks them down. Another well-documented trip-this time to Alaska-follows. Toward the end, an Indian shaman, Raven, shows her alien wonders and a vision of a future Earth. The minute detail and foreshadowing are wearying, and Rosa's destiny ultimately falls flat: it's a tale of courage told by a courageous but unimaginative woman. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Fleeing an abusive marriage, Rosa Coleman and her teenage son, Daniel, begin a cross-country trek in the waning years of the 19th century. Their journey leads them to Alaska, where Rosa experiences a mystical encounter with a raven that changes her life forever. The author of The Forever War delivers an elegant parable of many worlds and multiple possibilities while telling the tale of a courageous woman whose life spans most of a century and whose hopes and dreams cross the barrier between worlds. A good choice for libraries where Haldeman enjoys a following. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Haldeman's fairly standard aliens-save-humanity-by-changing-history yarn is so well done that you forgive him for riding such an old-nag concept. In it, Rosa Coleman, born to wealth before the Civil War, in due course saves humanity through the agency of her son by her second husband. The boy, Gordon Coleman, becomes the physicist who prevents the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Two-thirds of the novel, however, is the superb historical tale--lacking any sf elements except, if you get it, a raven who croaks "No gold" instead of "Nevermore"--of Rosa's life in a time line in which Gordon was never born. That raven turns out to be the messenger of an alien who, taking the form of a Tlingit shaman, turns Rosa's life into the track that leads to the preservation of intelligent life on Earth--well, most of it, at least. Many may prefer the historical traits of the novel to its sf aspect. They also may admit that Haldeman couldn't write a bad book to win a bet. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Locus
A compelling and economical narrative ... brilliantly controlled sense of tone.
Book Description
Joe Haldeman has changed readers' perceptions of science fiction and war through such groundbreaking novels as The Forever War and Forever Peace. Now, the author David Brin calls "one of the best prophetic writers of our times" has crafted a tale in which the future of humanity is intertwined with the destiny of Rosa Tolliver-an ordinary woman in the days after the Civil War, trying to make a new life for herself in the Alaska gold fields and feeling an odd sense of being watched.
About the Author
Joe Haldeman has served twice as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America and is currently an adjunct professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His other works include Buying Time, Worlds, Worlds Apart, Worlds Enough and Time, The Hemingway Hoax, None So Blind, and 1968.
Guardian
FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
If this novel by Hugo- and Nebula Award–winning author Joe Haldeman's were a recipe, it would read: two cups of Camille Flammarion's Lumen, one cup Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, with a teaspoon of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol and a pinch of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven."
Guardian is the diary of Rosa Tolliver, a young woman growing up in post–Civil War America. After graduating from college, Rosa marries a lawyer, has a baby, and is living a seemingly charmed life in Philadelphia. But all is not well. When Rosa finds her husband sodomizing their son, Daniel, she decides to flee cross-country with Daniel and start a new life. Once safely in Dodge City, Rosa gets a job teaching and watches Daniel grow into a young man. But her husband is relentless, and when a Pinkerton agent shows up at their doorstep with orders to take Daniel back to his father, the two must run again. This time they go to Alaska, where Daniel has dreams of gold mining. When he is killed by a drunken miner, Rosa contemplates suicide and is visited by a strange raven that has been following her since Philadelphia.
Like all Haldeman works, Guardian is puzzling, powerful, and profound. Rosa's spiritual journey through time and space is both entertaining and enlightening. Paul Goat Allen
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Rosa Coleman has not had an easy life. Uprooted from her Southern home during the Civil War, she settled in Philadelphia; eventually she married a man of leisure, whose compassion quickly turned to cruelty. But once that cruelty was inflicted upon their only son Daniel, she picked up and fled with the boy across the uncivilized Western frontier - and into Alaska to start anew among the region's gold fields." But even the harsh journey across America has not prepared Rosa for the infinite possibilities that await her. Something not of this world has approached her. It has revealed the universe's secrets to her. And it will take her on an extraordinary odyssey as she discovers that she, Rosa Coleman, has a role to play in bringing peace to Earth...
FROM THE CRITICS
The New York Times
What began as a pleasant enough exercise in low-key (if well researched) nostalgia suddenly balloons into a quest for cosmic truth. The only link between the two is Rosa herself, who retains a no-nonsense approach to life and death even when she takes on the aspect of a dinosaurlike creature with ''an elephant-sized hunger'' for rotting flesh. What she learns on her guided tour of the multiverse leads to actions that, perhaps too neatly, allow Haldeman to make a plea for rational control of the powerful forces that science has put into our hands in the new millennium. It is hard to imagine this eminently likable book changing anyone's mind about the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war. But for those who instinctively recoil from the notion of making peace by killing people, it is nice to hear that someone or something out there concurs. — Gerald Jonas
Publishers Weekly
Hugo and Nebula Award-winner Haldeman (The Forever War) reworks classic SF themes in this odd and unsatisfying pastiche of travel narrative, alternate history, American Indian lore and adventure story. In 1879, Rosa Tolliver, a college-educated blueblood, marries a wealthy man who turns out to be a brute. She flees her Philadelphia mansion with her 14-year-old son, Daniel, and the two of them make their way to Dodge City, Kans. Rosa retrospectively describes the trip in incredible detail: the modes of transportation they took; the people they met; the books she read. With each carefully placed detail, Rosa weaves the tapestry of her life, and among the threads, she hints at a destiny: something extraordinary happens to her, and each book she reads, each decision she makes, in retrospect has something to do with this destiny. Her stay in Dodge City lasts only four years, and she and Daniel flee again when a Pinkerton detective tracks them down. Another well-documented trip-this time to Alaska-follows. Toward the end, an Indian shaman, Raven, shows her alien wonders and a vision of a future Earth. The minute detail and foreshadowing are wearying, and Rosa's destiny ultimately falls flat: it's a tale of courage told by a courageous but unimaginative woman. (Dec. 3)
Library Journal
Fleeing an abusive marriage, Rosa Coleman and her teenage son, Daniel, begin a cross-country trek in the waning years of the 19th century. Their journey leads them to Alaska, where Rosa experiences a mystical encounter with a raven that changes her life forever. The author of The Forever War delivers an elegant parable of many worlds and multiple possibilities while telling the tale of a courageous woman whose life spans most of a century and whose hopes and dreams cross the barrier between worlds. A good choice for libraries where Haldeman enjoys a following. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
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