THE BIG SKY BY A.B. GUTHRIE, JR. (1947)

The Big Sky does not quite fit the pattern which usually classifies a book as a "Western." Its setting is the high country of the Northwest in the early 1800s, before the western migration, before the ranchers and the cowboys, before civilization spoiled a wilderness Eden--a time that belonged to the Indians and the mountain men. It is both an epic adventure saga and an allegory about human nature and how we frequently destroy the very things that we love most.

Guthrie's hero, Boone Caudill, is 17 when he runs away from an abusive father and trouble with the law. "I don't hanker to live in no anthill," he tells Jim Deakins, a newfound friend. "I aim to go west into Injun country and trap me some beaver." The two set out together in a search for a place of adventure and freedom from civilization, and they find what they are looking for, only to see it disappearing bit by bit, sometimes due to their own actions.

This novel transcends what one expects from Western genre fiction and reads instead as literary fiction which happens to take place in the early West. Its characters are complex rather than one-dimensional. Its dialogue flows naturally, differentiating in vocabulary and cadence between speakers from varying backgrounds and regions. The descriptions of the wild landscapes are without peer, in my experience. Gutherie never tells the reader, using adjectives and metaphors and suchlike, but shows the reader, so that I actually felt present in the place. The prose is rhythmic and precise. It is so well written in every respect that it has that ineffable quality which takes a book from being just good to being great.

The Big Sky is an extraordinary book, in all senses of the word. I can't imagine why it is not taught in schools. I can't imagine why I never heard of it before.