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

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