East of the Mountains
   David Guterson
  2000 Harcourt Brace & Co., NY USA
   ISBN: 0151002290


It is harvest time in the Columbia Basin of central Washington state where orchards droop with ripened fruit & Ben Givens, recently retired, widowered & diagnosed with cancer, heads east, over the Cascade Mountains into the still wild sage deserts for one last bird hunt with his Brittanies & his memories. A rain-slicked highway & a headlong skid into a tree changes his plans.

I thoroughly enjoyed East of the Mountains partly because David Guterson's writing flows like windswept wild grasses, partly because I've roamed those same sagelands & partly because Ben Givens was headed off into a world of hurt with quiet dignity, forthright rebellion about his diagnosis & a lifetime of memories I wanted to hear.

David Guterson narrowly avoids sentimentality by allowing Ben's adventures to draw some blood, be scary enough to rouse a hero's lethargy & full enough with unexpressed loneliness, orneryness & dashes of dumb luck & mean spiritedness that I kept on wanting to walk beside Ben.

Wanted those adventures to keep going. Having taken care of our Poppa during his last years of life, I had a very good idea just how valuable Ben's life & death will mean to his daughter.

Also by David Guterson: Snow Falling on Cedars now a major movie; Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense & The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind Stories
(09/03/00)

Rebecca