Robert Grainier is a day laborer in the American West during the early twentieth century. He hauls freight, builds bridges, and clears land for the expanding railroad. After a wildfire destroys his home and kills his wife and daughter, Grainier lives in near-solitude in the Idaho Panhandle. His life spans the transition from the frontier era to the space age. He encounters wolves, indigenous curse myths, and a feral child, witnessing the physical destruction of the natural landscape through industrial growth.
Readers of historical fiction and minimalist prose find value in this novella for its unsentimental view of American expansion. It attracts those interested in the collision between mystical folklore and the harsh realities of physical labor. A reader finishes the book with a concrete sense of how an ordinary life can witness the total disappearance of a wilderness. It provides a study of grief managed through silence and the endurance required to survive in an increasingly mechanized world.
Deep, inward-looking, contemplative and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Wisdom Collector. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2002
- Language
- EN
