The Big Sky

Rating:
Summary: Great book, tragic story continue to expand in memory
Review: As an adolescent--a very long time ago!--I was fascinated by _Men to Match My Mountains_. I thought my interest in mountain-men was extinguished long ago, and even as I read and admired _The Big Sky_, I maintained a large psychological distance. However, it has continued to percolate in my memory and I now see how well it applies to later rapers of the West who see themselves as its lovers. The book is a formidable achievment with resonances beyond the vivid, tragic characters.

Rating:
Summary: The archetypal frontiersman novel.
Review: For anyone who has read and enjoyed a fair cross-section of the mountain man adventure novel genre, reading "The Big Sky" will let you know where many of the major plot elements that drive these works originated. (Well, maybe not originated, but Guthrie used them earlier than many.) For one, fans of Terry Johnston's Titus Bass will see an uncanny resemblance between Bass and Guthrie's Boone Caudill. Guthrie writes in a slightly more literary style than his latter-day imitators, and he displays a particular talent with dialogue and imagery. Perhaps the only reason I wasn't overly impressed was that I'd read it all before--in novels written 30-40 years after Guthrie penned "The Big Sky."

Rating:
Summary: A Montana-sized Achievement.
Review: Guthrie's incredible characters, Dick, Boone, and Jim, personify the near-mythical mountain man we later see stereotyped as Jeremiah Johnson, Grizzly Adams, and countless others. Guthrie defines these simple and compelling wanderers of the verdant yet unforgiving West at a time when wild animals and Indians still ruled.

The Big Sky is an American history lesson. It is a preservation in beautiful prose of a rich landscape now largely gone. It is the dictation of the dream shared by many a young male (and plenty in mid-life-crisis) to roam free, shed all societal complications, live off the land, and to face all fears. It is one of my favorite books, matched only by The Frontiersman by Alan Eckert.

The writing contains a great balance of scene, plot, characterization, and action. It's readable by all from age twelve on up. You just can't go wrong with this one. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

Rating:
Summary: Great story--poetry in book form!
Review: Hi folks, my name's James Drury. I played The Virginian for nine years, as some of you may remember, and I had occasion to read many Western and to enjoy many of them come to life on the screen. None of them were much better than this book by A.B. Guthrie. This man writes with a power that is seldom seen anymore, a power and a flowing poetry that would be hard to beat. If you haven't read this book, please do yourself the favor. I promise you will not regret it. This one is not to be missed. A.B. Guthrie, with this book, has produced a story as ruggedly poetic as the best of Elmer Kelton, Kirby Jonas or Elmore Leonard--even Jack Schaefer.

Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary achievement...
Review: I first read this book when I was 14 or 15 years old and it lead to a lifelong interest in the fur trade era and the history of western expansion. I have re-read it several times since and continue to be amazed by it's power. Guthrie's love of the land about which he writes is obvious. His writing is perhaps the most evocative of place that I have ever read. I have never been to the plains or the Rockies, yet from reading this book I have come to feel as though I knew these places when they were still wild. His characters are real and believable people, with strengths and weaknesses and distinctly different personalities. Dick Summers in particular stands out in his humanity - a strong character with a gentle and compassionate side. Guthrie has also obviously studied the details of the mountain man's life. His descriptions of dress, mannerisms, and customs add depth to an already remarkable book. Although certainly not necessary, it might be helpful to keep a good map and/or a guide to Native Americans at hand while reading this book in order to orient yourself to places and tribes as you read. A great book.

Rating:
Summary: One of America's greatest literary achievments
Review: I have read The Big Sky three times, and scanned it many more. Having grown up in Browning, MT, this book really takes me home. What sets Guthrie's work apart from other writers of the mountain man genre, is character development. The way characters like Jim Deakins, and Boone Caudill, and Dick Summers, become complete people, is uncanny. The internal dialogues each carry on is fascinating. Jim's thoughts about god are succinct, and( I feel) right on the money. Boone Caudill is a misfit in any society, and the only way he could possibly live and let live, is utterly on his own. He becomes "broody" when in the company of others, and is nowhere near likable. His demeanor is completely opposed to that of Jim Deakins, who is carefree, and refuses to take anything too seriously. Boone's words, upon their meeting, "A man would have to be willing to stand by his partner, come whatever" (a paraphrase), turn out to be very ironic. Dick Summers is really the main character, as his saga continues through "The Way West", and "Fair Land, Fair Land". He is the balance between the two, and the glue that holds the partnership together. This book chronicles the heyday of the fur trade, and signals the end of that era, and the open west. I'd highly recommend it to anyone, be it for it's accurate descriptions of the time, or it's sociological implications. It is not just another mountain man story.

Rating:
Summary: Great read - like James Fenmore Cooper -
Review: I really enjoyed this work. Didnt know this guy won a Pulitzer but it figures. I was swept away by the imagery created by this master. It was evocative of Cooper (although he surpasses Cooper), and McMurtry and the guy who wrote "all the pretty horses". The "master" can always create the world to drown the reader in - this guy is great - I plan to read the whole series...

Rating:
Summary: wonderful and entertaining
Review: I was reading Undaunted Courage while on a flight from LA to Seattle when the guy in the seat next to me struck up a conversation. Turns out he was from Montana and he highly recommended The Big Sky. Several months later I picked it up and was blown away. What a great adventure story and what wonderful characters. I am about to begin the sequel "The Way West" . Much obliged ,stranger for the advice.

Rating:
Summary: A powerful book!
Review: I've read this and Guthrie's other books countless times. The power and history of the story have yet to disappoint me. Guthrie captures the people, the times, and the "feel" of the west as no other author has. I grew up in the area where much of Guthrie's story takes place. When I need a dose of home, all I have to do is reread one of his books.

Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece of Western fiction.
Review: The Big Sky is not just a masterpiece, it's probably THE masterpiece of the genre of western frontier fiction. This is unusual because it deals with a moment in time that isn't really dealt with that much - the Rocky Mountain fur trade during its golden age of about 1820 - 1850. The cowboy era has been responsible for most of western film and literature, partly because the images and events that happen in that world are recognizable to us: the economic and social issues you always see dealt with in "cowboy" movies mirror our own experiences in many ways. The cowboy has also been said to be an image of freedom to Americans, when actually nothing was further from the truth. Cowboys were regular working stiffs, about as romantic as carpenters or plumbers in their own day. They didn't consider themselves "free", nor would they have spent much time thinking about it during their brutal 14 hour work day. They did what they did because they loved horses and riding and cattle and it was good honest work that paid a living wage, and there was a bit of swagger to it - people in town recognized cow hands for the tough-as-leather men they were, especially with their characteristic boots and hats and general flair for the dramatic that many had. But it was backbreaking work, and the entire cowboy heydey lasted less than 30 years.

I said all that to say that "The Big Sky" really is about freedom, and really is about the West. It's about the true, wild, primitive west, before the plow, before roads, when there were still huge, intact Indian cultures in place with armies of horsemen and enormous herds of buffalo. So it's interesting to me that this genre is largely ignored, but I can see why - there are no set-piece plots just begging to be turned into movies - no "new sherriff in town" characters, because there are no sherriffs, and no towns other than a few trading posts. There is only the land and the sky and the interaction between a few incredibly brave white men and all those Indians.

If you don't already know, this is the story of Boone Caudill and his friend Jim Deakins, and several important side characters, but it's basically Boone's book. He's driven west by an aching need for wildness and freedom, and is pushed out by a brutal father. He makes his way west to St. Louis, along the way befriending Deakins, in hopes of meeting his uncle Zeb who had become a trapper years earlier. The rest of the tail is complex and interlaced, and not a simplistic good guy/bad guy plot at all, and what stands out is the crystalline depictions of the people and places and over all, arching like the sky itself, is freedom. Freedom to roam at will in that beautiful country is the main character of this book. Freedom is the religion, the politics, the philosophy, the recreation - it is everything that is important. The trappers are there to trap - sure - but they're really there because this is a wild, free place, where they will not be hampered by rules, where they can be natural men. It sounds over romanticized, but it really did happen that way, and from what we know, that is truly the way they felt about their lives and why they endured the agonies of that existence. Despairing that new settlers are moving west and building farms and towns, Boone cries "Lord, Jim - remember the Tetons standing proud in the sun, and the Seeds Ke Dee...don't you remember her when she was all purty and new and not a man track on her save Injun?" This novel makes you sob like few I've ever read. The sense of loss, the closing of an age of the world, hangs in the air like mist. They are going to be the last to see something so precious, and for their pains they get to watch their world wither and die under the press of settlement.

The movie "The Mountain Men" with Charleton Heston comes close to capturing a tiny bit of this book, and you can tell it's inspired in many ways by it, but no other book or film has ever come close to truly painting the world of the mountain man as has this novel. "Jeremiah Johnson" is another good film, with many fine touches. But if you want to follow the water up stream, back to its source in the mountains, then please, before you grow too old, read "The Big Sky" and open your heart to that time and place and the wild, brazen beauty of the America few Americans know ever existed.