Set in the late 19th century, The Last Crossing, Guy Vanderhaeghe's first novel since his acclaimed Englishman's Boy, is the story of three well-off English brothers: twins Simon and Charles Gaunt and their elder sibling, Addington, a former soldier and an arrogant scoundrel. At the behest of their dictatorial father, Charles and Addington travel the prairies of the U.S. and Canada in search of sensitive Simon, who has disappeared. Much of the novel concerns their journeys--bottles of port and claret rattling in their wagons--through Indian country with a cast of intricately drawn, fully realized characters. The small troupe is led through the whiskey-coloured light by Jerry Potts, a half-breed with one foot firmly in each world. The heart of the plot involves the love that Charles, a painter, feels for Lucy Stoveall, a simple but lovely country woman who accompanies them, secretly intent on avenging her sister's murder. However, the most intriguing character in this marvelous collection of all-too-human personalities is Custis Straw, a Bible-reading, heavy-drinking Civil War veteran who hides his tremendous dignity behind a bumbling facade, and who also loves Lucy.

Vanderhaeghe's rich language reveals a genuine feel for the prairies and their rough settlements: "a boom town draws rogues like a jam jar draws wasps," he writes, and describes "miles of wet plain patched with apple green, new penny copper, glints of silver." Though this is a Western in the traditional sense, Vanderhaeghe never sinks into parody. Rather, he uses the Western motif to reveal a number of profound universal truths about personal honour, and human failings and strengths. His humane character depictions reach emotional depths found in few novels today. --Mark Frutkin, Amazon.ca


From Publishers Weekly
This sweeping epic novel of the search for a lost Englishman in the raw Indian territories of the U.S.-Canadian Western borderlands in the late 19th century was a Canadian bestseller and award-winner last year, but has only just made it here. That's puzzling, for Vanderhaeghe (The Englishman's Boy) is a prodigiously gifted writer who makes the West, its fierce weathers, rugged landscapes and contrary characters come to life in a way comparable to McMurtry at his best. He tells of the disappearance on the prairie of a wealthy and idealistic young Englishman, Simon Gaunt, in the company of a devious missionary who is later found dead. Simon's tyrannical father sends brothers Charles and Addington to see if they can find out what happened to him and if, by chance, he is still alive. The dreamy, artistic Charles and the preening, choleric Addington get together with a Scots-Indian half-breed, Jerry Potts (a real person of the time), as their guide and set out into a wilderness inhabited only by warring Indian tribes and rogue traders selling them whiskey. They are accompanied by Lucy Stoveall, a tough beauty in search of the renegades who raped and murdered her young sister, and Custis Straw, a battered Civil War veteran desperately in love with her. Their adventures are pulse-poundingly exciting and graphic, and if the book has a fault it is that it is almost overstuffed with drama and incident. A pair of brilliant set pieces-Straw's memories of a bloody Civil War battle, and a murderous encounter between warring Indian tribes-are not really essential to the narrative, and the elegiac ending seems oddly off-key. But the book's rewards far transcend these excesses, and no reader once embarked on this hugely involving adventure will be able to stop until it is done. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From AudioFile
Canadian Guy Vanderhaeghe's latest book is finally getting him the attention he deserves in the U.S. THE LAST CROSSING is set in the late nineteenth century and follows two Englishmen, Charles and Addington Gaunt, who travel to the American West to seek their vanished brother. The novel shifts point of view among several characters, and the producers have handled this by using a different narrator for each. The casting is good-Keating is particularly strong as Charles-and the technique generally works well, but it's applied inconsistently, and the result is disorienting. At one point, the narrators exchange lines as in a full-cast adaptation, while in other sections they do not. (The latter is more effective.) But this flaw is not fatal. The abridgment has wisely been kept light, and the performances of the narrators are strong enough to make this recording a faithful and entertaining audio version of an outstanding novel. D.B. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
*Starred Review* If this historical novel uses a fairly common storytelling device--a group of mismatched characters embarks on a quest--its quality is decidedly uncommon. In 1870 idealistic English missionary Simon Gaunt disappears in a Montana blizzard. The family patriarch directs brothers Charles, a painter, and Addington, a soldier, to find their sibling, whether alive or dead. Charles misses Simon terribly; Addington looks forward to touring the West. The Gaunts aren't the only ones with different agendas. The search party that departs from Fort Benton eventually includes Lucy Stoveall, a laundress chasing her sister's murderer; Custis Straw, a haunted Civil War veteran in love with Lucy; and Jerry Potts, a half-breed guide torn between worlds. Despite Addington's increasingly erratic command, most of the travelers' desires are fulfilled, albeit in unexpected fashion and not always in due time. Popular Canadian writer Vanderhaeghe (The Englishman's Boy, 1996) moves deftly between present and past, between exterior and interior landscapes, choosing unique and telling details. Especially excellent are first-person passages in which richly individual voices give the story the pulse of life. Underlying themes are fertile: the construction of identity, the lure of wildness, and the scars inflicted by civilization. Should find a wide readership. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


John Vernon, The New York Times Book Review
"[Vanderhaeghe is] a Dickensian sensationalist. His flair for the lurid can be exquisite."


Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly (B+)
"Big, satisfying…juicy, tough, gruesome....This isn't escapist literature of an adolescent's dream, but something decidedly more bracing and grown-up."


The New Yorker
"As the various searches for revenge or redemption get under way the writing achieves unforced grace and power."


Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Sumptuously imagined and fashioned with a master craftsman’s attentiveness and finesse....Brilliant work."


Review
?Rarely are today?s hungry readers invited to such a feast of a book.?Here are brilliant writing, picaresque adventure, plot twists, history and studies of human nature. . . . There are few writers who can encapsulate a character in a single sentence, turn a phrase or manipulate a metaphor as brilliantly as Vanderhaeghe.?The Last Crossing deserves honours and the widest readership. Guy Vanderhaeghe, one of North America?s best writers, is at the top of his form.?
?Annie Proulx, Globe and Mail

?The Last Crossing is both a Canadian classic and a rousing adventure.?A tremendous achievement of imagination, capturing the West in all its grandeur. With its intricate layering of stories, constant surprises, unforgettable scenes and characters and dramatic landscape, Vanderhaeghe?s saga is certain to resonate with readers long after they?ve finished the book.?
?Calgary Herald

?A tour de force. Wonderfully written, suspenseful and totally absorbing, this novel must be [Vanderhaeghe?s] most powerful to date. . . . Many voices take up Vanderhaeghe?s twisting tale and its criss-cross pattern is skillfully woven into a chronicle of singular style and impressive power. This book is a remarkable achievement, a page-turner not only of epic proportions but of exceptional literary merit.?A book impossible to set aside.?
?London Free Press

?The Last Crossing is truly Vanderhaeghe?s masterpiece.?The variety of voices, settings and action evokes an almost inebriated response from the reader whose imagination is sparked to overflowing by such abundance.?Vanderhaeghe?s ability to hold in his imagination all of these characters and all of this vast narrative with its complexity of tensions and intensity of meaning, is testament to the creative genius of this writer and his passionate commitment to his craft.?
?Books in Canada

?The Last Crossing is an enormously rich and complex work, spanning time and place. It is an amazingly good story, and it both creates and satisfies a profound emotional need in readers. Thank you, Guy Vanderhaeghe.?
?Edmonton Journal

?The Last Crossing is Vanderhaeghe?s masterpiece.?The novel is so consistently vivid, the storytelling so magnificent.?What Vanderhaeghe is responding to, what he is writing about ? albeit in a story that takes place more than a hundred years ago ? is very much our present.?The Last Crossing is also a terrific entertainment. . . . In Vanderhaeghe?s book something approaching perfection is achieved. Scene follows scene described with such dexterity and skill that I was left, time and again, astonished.?Here is a story that you can hear, see, smell, as you read it. The Last Crossing is a novel with a broad canvas, but of intimately handled physical detail. The suspense is unflagging, its several voices distinct. Not once does Vanderhaeghe put a foot wrong.?
?Noah Richer, National Post

?[A] brilliant new novel.?The Last Crossing is one of those rarities: a page-turner that also bears the graceful prose and layered meanings of great literature.?
?Maclean?s

?The best Canadian book I?ve read this year is Guy Vanderhaeghe?s The Last Crossing.?Vanderhaeghe?s is an epic novel, but without the sometimes baggy sprawl the use of that word can connote; he maintains almost pitch-perfect control over five distinct narrative voices. If ?excellence? means anything, this novel is excellent.?
?Martin Levin, Globe and Mail

?The most astounding, unforgettable, literary journey ever penned in Canada about the 19th-century prairie.?The Last Crossing is a tale of lust, murder, revenge, shock and survival. But this is no pulp fiction. It is an arresting work of art more in the vein of Leo Tolstoy or Charles Dickens.?Each character is crafted with the care and precision of a Michelangelo sculpture. The plot grabs you in such a fierce, determined way that it is impossible, once started, to set the book aside.?In the end, The Last Crossing is nothing less than the first great novel about Canada?s Old West.?
?Ottawa Citizen

?The Last Crossing is an absolutely wonderful book, the kind of literature that reminds other writers of why they want to create, and convinces readers the world is a vast and mythic enterprise, larger than our individual crises or triumphs.?[Vanderhaeghe crosses] histories, borders and story lines with remarkable virtuosity.?It is a joy to read, to go through this wild world with a writer who has fully stretched out over a landscape big enough to accommodate his stride.?
?National Post

?When he arms his characters with speech ? internal or external, uttered or unuttered ? the reader feels the pulse of life.?The strongest and strangest and most compelling of Vanderhaeghe?s novels.?
?Toronto Star

?There?s no putting the book down.?Masterful.?
?Montreal Gazette

?The Last Crosssing?s epic sweep, historical scope, unforgettable characters, thematic complexity, compelling narrative and mythic underpinnings make it a hugely satisfying read. It is a novel of staggering literary achievement and immense emotional power that brings Canadian history to life.?
?Kitchener-Waterloo Record

?With a sharp eye, Vanderhaeghe creates scenes that are unforgettable.?The Last Crossing is his masterpiece.?
?Halifax Daily News

?Brilliant and engaging.??
?Calgary Herald



From the Hardcover edition.


Book Description
A novel of ruggedness and salvation, an epic masterpiece set in a time when worlds collided, were destroyed, and were built anew A #1 best-seller in Canada and winner of the Canadian Booksellers Association’s Fiction Book of the Year Award, The Last Crossing is a sweeping tale of breathtaking quests, adventurous detours, and hard-won redemption. Master storyteller Guy Vanderhaeghe—hailed by Richard Ford as "simply a wonderful writer"—takes us on an exhilarating journey from the ivy-covered towers of Oxford in Victorian England to the dusty whiskey trading posts of the nineteenth-century American and Canadian West. Englishmen Charles and Addington Gaunt are ordered by their tyrannical industrialist father to find their brother Simon, who has gone missing in the wilds of the American West. Charles, a disillusioned artist, and Addington, a disgraced military captain, set off to Fort Benton in America and enlist the services of a guide to lead them north, where Simon was last seen. The brothers hire the enigmatic Jerry Potts, half Blackfoot, half Scot, who suffers from his own painful past. At Addington’s command, the party grows to include Caleb Ayto, a sycophantic American journalist, who is to record the journey for posterity; Lucy Stoveall, a fiery and beautiful woman who is bent on finding the men who viciously killed her sister; Custis Straw, a Civil War veteran in love with Lucy; and saloon keeper Aloysius Dooley. This unlikely posse, now encumbered with both psychological baggage and wagon trains, becomes entangled in an unfolding drama that forces each to come to terms with his o! r her own demons. Told from alternating points of view and in vivid flashbacks, The Last Crossing conveys the varied lives of its search party in haunting scenes—a bear hunt at dawn, the discovery of an Indian village decimated by smallpox, a sharpshooter’s devastating annihilation of his prey, a soldier’s guilt-ridden memory of his own survival, and an atypical love story.


From the Publisher
CBA Libris Awards—Fiction Book of the Year A Nominee for the 2004 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize A #1 National Best-Seller in Canada

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Englishmen Charles and Addington Gaunt are ordered by their tyrannical industrialist father to find their brother Simon, who has gone missing in the wilds of the American West. Charles, a disillusioned artist, and Addington, a disgraced military captain, set off to remote Fort Benton, in the outreaches of the Montana frontier. The brothers hire the enigmatic Jerry Potts, a half-Blackfoot, half-Scot guide, to lead them north, where Simon was last seen. Addington takes command of the mission, buying enough provisions to fill two wagons, and hires sycophantic journalist Caleb Ayto to record the journey for posterity. As the party heads out, it grows to include Lucy Stoveall, a fiery and beautiful woman who is bent on finding the men who viciously killed her sister; Custis Straw, a Civil War veteran in love with Lucy; and saloonkeeper Aloysius Dooley, loyal friend to Custis Straw. This unlikely posse becomes entangled in an unfolding drama that forces each one of them to confront his or her own demons.

Told from alternating points of view and in vivid flashbacks, The Last Crossing conveys the varied views of its search party in haunting scenes - a bear hunt at dawn, the discovery of an Indian village decimated by smallpox, a sharpshooter's devastating annihilation of his prey, a soldier's guilt-ridden memory of his own survival, and an atypical love story. The Last Crossing is a novel of ruggedness and salvation, set in a time when worlds collided, were destroyed, and were built anew.

Guy Vanderhaeghe is a visiting professor of English at S.T.M. College in Saskatchewan, Canada.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

The stories, for example, of John Rowand of the Hudson's Bay Company and ''Rowand's Folly'' (his three-story log house, with a gallery and an immense ballroom), of Rowand's bizarre funeral procession back and forth across the Atlantic, his corpse pickled in rum, and of the voyageurs who drank the rum along the way, have little to do with the novel's careful interlocking of narrative pieces but everything to do with a baroque love of history and its freakish incongruities. So we get both a tour guide and a parody of tour guides in the padded-with-arcana middle portion of the book. Epic novels can be loose, baggy monsters, but this one is stuffed with enough goodies to keep us entertained for days. —John Vernon

The Washington Post

The Last Crossing is assured and impassioned, brutal and tender, a convincing re-creation of its milieu, a sharp group portrait of its characters. At one point Charles worries that he might be one of those artists who excel at sketching the background only to falter when it's time to add the forefront that gives the painting its reason to be. As a novelist, Guy Vanderhaeghe does justice to it all: distance, closeups and all the shadings in between. — Dennis Drabelle

The New Yorker

Centered on three English brothers who venture to the American West—one as a missionary, the two others in pursuit when he disappears—this saga encompasses a wide range of characters through alternating narrative voices. In a panorama of late-nineteenth-century Montana and western Canada, Vanderhaeghe details the lawlessness of the early frontier towns and the desperate ferocity of the dying indigenous tribes. He dwells with particular pathos on the children of white traders and Native American women, who are caught between two cultures. The prose can be overripe, particularly in the opening chapters, and moments of historical exposition are clumsily inserted. However, the sweep of the narrative gradually overcomes these missteps, and as the various searches for revenge or redemption get under way the writing achieves unforced grace and power.

Publishers Weekly

This sweeping epic novel of the search for a lost Englishman in the raw Indian territories of the U.S.-Canadian Western borderlands in the late 19th century was a Canadian bestseller and award-winner last year, but has only just made it here. That's puzzling, for Vanderhaeghe (The Englishman's Boy) is a prodigiously gifted writer who makes the West, its fierce weathers, rugged landscapes and contrary characters come to life in a way comparable to McMurtry at his best. He tells of the disappearance on the prairie of a wealthy and idealistic young Englishman, Simon Gaunt, in the company of a devious missionary who is later found dead. Simon's tyrannical father sends brothers Charles and Addington to see if they can find out what happened to him and if, by chance, he is still alive. The dreamy, artistic Charles and the preening, choleric Addington get together with a Scots-Indian half-breed, Jerry Potts (a real person of the time), as their guide and set out into a wilderness inhabited only by warring Indian tribes and rogue traders selling them whiskey. They are accompanied by Lucy Stoveall, a tough beauty in search of the renegades who raped and murdered her young sister, and Custis Straw, a battered Civil War veteran desperately in love with her. Their adventures are pulse-poundingly exciting and graphic, and if the book has a fault it is that it is almost overstuffed with drama and incident. A pair of brilliant set pieces-Straw's memories of a bloody Civil War battle, and a murderous encounter between warring Indian tribes-are not really essential to the narrative, and the elegiac ending seems oddly off-key. But the book's rewards far transcend these excesses, and no reader once embarked on this hugely involving adventure will be able to stop until it is done. 8-city tour. (Feb.) Forecast: Stressing the book's huge success in Canada and playing up the glowing tributes to Vanderhaeghe from the likes of Richard Ford and Annie Proulx should help alert customers to the arrival here of a major talent far too little known. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews