Karen Fisher

For me, the definition of truly great fiction is a work that makes you see something you thought you knew and understood as if you were really seeing and understanding it for the first time. And, based on that criterion, this is a fabulous, unforgettable novel.

Things that this book is NOT …
• It is not an easy read.
• It is NOT a “cowboy romance.”
• It is not a neatly packaged, respectfully sanitized tale of plucky pioneers.
• It is not “Madame Bovary on the Oregon Trail” …

What it IS, is a fantastic story. Complicated, messy. Disturbing even: Fisher uses a set-up that could, in lesser hands, have been a horrible cliché (cowboy romance, plucky pioneers, even low-budget Madame Bovary) and turns it, instead, into a fabulously written and structured story about the dynamics between complicated people, in a difficult and dangerous situation, and the stories – the lies – that we tell ourselves in order to survive. The versions of those lies that we pass down, in the hope that someone, in a far distant future that we can scarcely imagine, will remember us, and understand us and our sorry little struggles.

A story about stories and how, sometimes, we make them come true.

It is not, as I said an easy read. Fisher has adopted a style that is choppy and poetic, archaic and sometimes shockingly and anachronistically modern, and you have to pay attention, or you can miss minor little things like what the heck is actually happening … It took me a while to get into it and it actually helped that, after reading about 70-odd pages, I had to take an enforced break. When I returned to it, I realized that I could barely remember a thing about the who, what where, etc, and I decided to start again. While I was on hiatus, my brain must have been quietly constructing an algorithm for dealing with Fisher’s prose, because I found that I was immediately immersed in the intertwined stories of James McLaren, tragedy-stricken former trapper with the Hudson Bay Company, grieving father and (possibly) wronged husband, and Lucy Mitchell, one of a family of American Midwesterners on the Oregon Trail -- devoted mother, grieving widow, half-hearted wife, and reluctant pioneer. Fisher’s twisty, complicated prose suddenly seemed like the most effective way – the only way possible of truthfully rendering the thoughts and dialogue of characters who otherwise might seem as distant and alien to me as Martians.

The best analogy I can think of is the style of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which manages simultaneously to convey that these are people who are very much not like us in their attitudes and assumptions, while at the same time being just like us, in everything that really matters, the things that make us all human. That, in my opinion, is high praise – and Fisher richly deserves it.

Fisher developed her novel from a very brief account (it hardly rates the word “journal”) of her ancestors’ 1847 journey from Iowa to Portland, Oregon, written by her teenage great-great grandmother. This is incorporated into the narrative, with some other original family documents, at the end of the novel. What I find fascinating is that Fisher’s style, which seems at first sight so “edgy” and modern, has been drawn directly from the slightly stiff, slightly formal and very innocent style of her child ancestor’s barebones account. Emma Rose Ross manages to render a punishing journey of over a year’s duration, which almost resulted in the deaths of herself, her siblings and parents, into two pages that skate over the dramatic episodes, rattle off a list of the names of the families on the trail with them (wonderful, evocative names – “ … Littlejohn … Peabo … Lamphere … Koonse …”), and focuses instead on the tiny details, the magical and frightening moments that a child would notice and remember, the bright memories and the tragic ones all jumbled together. ( On July Fourth, some of the men took pails to a snow field & brought snow to us. We took a cut-off stretch and went no water all day or night and there our nice mare perished and a cow of Mr. Apperson’s … )

Fisher has taken this intriguing, and frustrating account – and spun it into pure gold. The episodes her child-ancestor describes are reworked and reimagined to accommodate the wild card that Fisher has introduced into the story of Emma Rose and her family – James McLaren, who becomes part of their journey like a spirit (malign? Or noble?) of the new land they are travelling through and making their new home.

This is highly recommended, and I can’t wait to read it again one day.… (mais)

A memorable book about one family's experiences travelling by wagon from Pennsylvania to Oregon in 1850. This novel is based on actual historical records from the author's ancestors, and I loved Karen Fisher's dreamlike writing style. More realistic than romantic, this novel has wonderful characters and true descriptions of the extremely difficult experiences on the road and the job of just surviving such a sojourn. One of the most wrenching opening scenes I've read in a longtime drew me in immediately to this rich story.… (mais)

This book takes you along with the Mitchell family as they move from Pennsylvania to Oregon in a covered wagon as part of the U.S. migration West. Fisher takes you through the decisions and relationships encountered - the people they meet, the things they take along and eventually leave behind. Survival in everyday life where what was important before the Trail becomes trivial and decadent. Characterized as a love story, but I didn't see it that way. Was a little surprised at the ending, but shouldn't have been. More realistic than romantic, which is prefered I think with this sort of story.… (mais)