Lin Enger

This novel was part western and part romance. Not my usual type of book, but it was a good story.
Ulysses Pope (Popovich) marries Gretta and they have two sons, Eli & Danny. Danny is pretty frail and consistently needs his mother's caring.
Ulysses leaves one day and does not come back. He is search of something from his past that he has not shared with his family. His two sons venture on their own to find him and they are really young. Gretta then takes off to find him and comes to an errant conclusion about him.
There is much description in the book and it makes you want to envision everything that they are seeing.… (altro)

With fifty odd pages to go I want to record what I think will happen. Ulysses will die one way or another, possibly saving his son. That would resolve the problem of what he was going to do when he’d spoken to Magpie, if he ever does. Will he desert his wife, Gretta and stay with Mrs Powers or ‘the woman’ as she is frequently called? This would make for a sour ending but, actually, one that nicely mirrors the way life turns out. Mrs Powers, even if a husband stealer in Gretta’s eyes, is still not a bad person, someone who has helped the boys.

That’s what I like about this book – its fallible characters, Ulysses obviously and I’m glad Enger gives free rein to Eli to tell his father off for deserting his family without a word. I had expected finding the father to be the climax of the book so when Eli and Danny caught up with him, I thought it would be a bit of an anti-climax from then on but Enger takes the reader through a number of mini crises and climaxes and manages to offer surprises such as the tin broach that Mrs Powers reveals to Gretta, suggesting the bond between Mrs P and Ulysses and additionally there’s the memory we’ve already been given of this broach boobing up and down on Gretta breast-bone during their love-making in the past so the betrayal, if indeed he did give it to her, is yet deeper.

I see where the title comes from – both the geography and the way Gretta and Ulysses can’t share their thoughts. Quite why Ulysses is this called, I still ponder. Is it because his namesake had an epic adventure in the same way that this novel’s Ulysses is on a quest? Of course Ulysses’ Penelope was constantly faithful to him whereas Gretta has developed strong doubts about her husband and where I am in the story is considering parting from him.

Now finished the book . . . so, a sentimental, happy ending. Not sure about this. In a way it seemed to contradict what came before. I think of ‘Cold Mountain’ with a much more nuanced ending. Still, I rate the book highly. Danny wasn't the most convincing character used to have visions of what's happening elsewhere and mysteriously shaking off his frailties and visions at the end. Still, there was a lot of developed characterisation of a complex nature.

'No matter what he has, there are things a man can't leave behind, things beyond him.'… (altro)

It's 1886 and Ulysses Pope has walked away from the home he shares with his wife, Gretta and two sons in western Minnesota without leaving any note to his whereabouts or intentions. When Eli, his eldest son, discovers where he might have gone he decides to secretly follow his father's tracks. Unbeknownst to him, his younger brother, Danny, is right on his heels and both meet up at the train station. Steadfast Danny will not return home so both hop a train headed west.
Gretta, now alone and past due on the rent must decide whether to stay in Minnesota and hope for her families swift return, succumb to the land owners advances in order to keep her home or travel east to St. Paul husband's boyhood home where surely he must have returned.
The decisions to go west and east are journey's of discovery for Gretta and her boys. They learn about the quiet man they thought they knew and the demons that haunt his memory.
A very entertaining history lesson of a book which hints toward the future of the young United States but is still entangled by the actions of those who wanted to form it as they saw fit.… (altro)

A veteran of the War Between the States leaves his family wondering why he suddenly left and whether he’s coming back. They know there is something in his past that oppresses him, but they do not understand. His two boys are too young, and his wife’s example of her own mother makes her leave well enough alone.

This is a story about a family trying to find itself again, about guilt and a journey for redemption. This is my favorite kind of story-telling – strongly character driven, with a rich sense of place and time. With the High Divide, it is almost as if Lin Enger has made an Albert Bierstadt painting come to life.… (altro)