A Sudden Country
By Karen Fisher
Random House
New in paperback is Fisher’s stirring novel about a family’s journey on the Oregon Trail in 1847. Lucy and Israel Mitchell set out from Iowa with five children, two wagons and a marriage that is civil but without passion or accord: Lucy does not want to go west, but Israel insists on it. They join with other families and take on guides, one of whom is James MacLaren, a former fur trader whose Indian wife abandoned him just before his children died of smallpox. The love affair that ensues between Lucy and the sorrowful MacLaren is unlikely and overwrought, but Fisher’s novel is sensuous in so many other, better ways as it follows the wagons through a wild and beautiful country that is destined to change forever. This novel was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won several other honors. Critics loved it. One called it “an instant classic,” another said it was “a grand, mesmerizing novel,” and others compared it to Charles Frazier’s bestselling novel Cold Mountain. New & Notable said the book was “history brought to life.”
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