I particularly love fiction when the allegory and the story march hand-in-hand to a natural conclusion. I don’t need to be spoon-fed, I just relish when the character and the polemic arrive at similar points, after similar journeys. Sounds simple… but, not so much.

“The Big Sky” is a beautifully written novel that takes some getting used to. It’s about the mountain men of the West during the years 1835-43 and A.B. Guthrie’s style is a perfect fit for the era and the people, whom he so lyrically d More...

THE BIG SKY. (1947). A. B. Guthrie, Jr. ****.
Albert Bertram Guthrie tells the story of Boone Caudill, who is seventeen-years old when we first meet him. Boone is an unsettled young man who is just coming into his manhood. He is in trouble; he beat up on a neighbor boy in a fight and broke his jaw. Now the law is after him. On top of it all, he fiinally managed to stand up to his abusive father and whacked him so hard with a stick of firewood that he thought he might have killed him. Boone has n More...

I tried--truly I did. Guthrie is a Pulitzer Prize winner and this has been called his masterpiece. It's not badly written by any means, quite the contrary, but this is one of those books I find way too dark in terms of the characters--and I say that as someone that loved The Color Purple and The Kite Runner. But then, both those novels have very appealing protagonists you can root for, here the major character never seemed anything but despicable, not simply just a scoundrel like in Little Big M More...

This is a book that I think anyone truly interested in the West needs to read. It's a very dense book and can be difficult to plow through because Guthrie writes all of his characters as speaking in dialect (it took me a few pages to figure out that "buffler" meant "buffalo" and a few more to mean that "white buffler" meant mountain goats....etc.). However, I think this is a book that really needs to be read after the last century's total mythologizing of the West by the entertainment industry, More...

This book is a masterpiece, although it was Guthrie's second book, The Way West, that won the Pulitzer Prize. It was written in 1947 but doesn't get read much any more. A shame.

Guthrie was appalled by the Western cowboy books that were being written. He wanted to write a novel that followed some of the first men to live in the harsh, lonely environment of the West. His work was carefully drawn from historical sources, journals, diaries, and numerous trips to the area. The characters in The Big S More...

I found this book very depressing. The main character Boone runs away from home because he's tired of being beaten by his father, who doesn't talk much, is surly, has few friends, drinks too much, and is mean to his wife. Yet in the end, he seems to become just like his father. I guess it's that whole Clint Eastwood hard guy image of men who don't talk much, deaden feelings they have, think at a surface level, and are loners, refusing the help and kindness of others. Having traveled and vacation More...

I read this book for my Literature of the American West class. Guthrie does an excellent job at portraying accurately the lifestyle and mannerisms of the mountain men, including their attachment to the land and the hard, exceptional kind of man it takes to really thrive in the harshness of the Old West. His attention to historical detail, including the speech mannerisms of the characters was one of this books strongest points for me.

This book was written in a very "realist" style. I liked the st More...

I would actually rate this closer to a 4 than a 3, but I won't over rate any book. This is a beautifully written book about harsh characters living in an unforgiving land. The fact that the main character, Boone Caudill, is almost unlikeable doesn't really detract to much from enjoying the story. I appreciated the fact that the author was a man who was familiar with the west and the lonely vastness of it. Toward the end of the story I began to wonder if Mr. Guthrie had finally found his theme an More...

Another book left over from the required reading list of high school students. Went looking for it thinking it was another and decided to read it anyway. It started out slow for me, definitely a boy/man's read. However, once into the plot it kept me engaged. The description of the wide open spaces of the then wild west were captivating, the reader can see it all without getting bogged down in too many details. The story of the main character, Boone, is a complex and sad one. A boy, then man, of More...

My 2nd western in the year of westerns!

First, I must tell you that The Big Sky is completely different from the western I read last month, Appaloosa. And not in a good way.

Our story begins when young Boone Caudill becomes tired of dealing with his father and leaves his Kentucky home. He’s aiming for St. Louis, where his uncle lives. Boone aspires to be free!

Along the way, he meets two men who will share in his adventures, Jim Deakins and Dick Summers. The men will travel together, trap together, More...

Guthrie must have deplored city-life as much as I do. I feel like I've found my soulmate.

- It's 1830. A Kentucky boy gets tired of his father's constant whuppin's and flees, aiming for the mighty Missouri River, in hopes of crossing it and becoming a mountain man.

- It's possible that one full third of the book involves the three main characters (all tough, no-nonsense mountain men) simply marveling at the beauty of nature, and the fact that they live their lives outdoors.

- Paints a pretty fair More...

The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie Jr. is an amazing tale whose understated and open prose is perfectly suited for the books western setting. Not cluttered with unnessecary flourish or self serving artistry it is stripped down and essential. Like the landscape and the characters that inhabit it this book is not so much about adventure, but about the search for freedom and open places.

Boone Caudill grows from a teenager oppressed under the rule of his heavy handed father to become an independent mounta More...

'The Big Sky' is the first book in this series by A.B. Guthrie. This is an extremely authentic look at the American Frontier, and the Mountain Men who made the wild their home before the settlers continued their push west. The language of this book is like reading Shakespeare, not in elegance but in style. It takes a bit to acclimate to the authentic portrayal of the language of the times. But after a bit you sink into a world where men sleep under the stars, eat their meat raw straight from a f More...

Read this book in college and was rather amused that NO ONE in the class liked it by the time we were finished. Most were so mad, our teacher actually told us the ending of one of the later books to make us feel better about the character we'd been forced to follow the entire way through.

He's not likable, not good, not redeemable in any way. The ending leaves you feeling bereft and depressed. I don't recommend this book to anyone. They make it sound like a romantic western love story, but it isn More...

This was one great book. Wide open spaces, majesty. The Way West by Guthrie won the Pulitzer but I liked this one better. It's a prequel to the Way West. I liked it better than Way West and I believe that's the one that won the Pulitzer. I am looking forward to reading the third in this trilogy, Fair land, fair land. Boone Caudill is a great but flawed character, a true rugged individualist. This book talks about the lives of trappers and adventurers in the late 1820s-early 1840s. One memorable More...

I read the intro by Wallace Stegner before I read the book, so I had a general idea of the plot line. Altho the story was definitely a good one, the language got in the way of reading smoothly. I mean, really, "How" ??? I did like the bold characters, & felt there was good development of them, and the book did give me a look at the mountain man aspect of the development of the West. I reread Stegner's intro after finishing the book & decided I liked the book more than perhaps I realized. More...

I love a book that MOVES, and The Big Sky does just that. Set in 1830 through 1843, its hero set out from Kentucky as a 17-year old, heading West - away from a cruel and heavy-handed father, toward Injun country, toward self-sufficiency, toward a land and a vision dreamed of in his childish mind based on the glory stories of a beloved uncle.

But Boone Caudill is not a warm and fuzzy hero, and his journey and destination are harsher than his boyhood imaginings. He gains his manhood watching his co More...

I debated going with 3 or 4 stars for this book. For the most part, I really enjoyed it. The writing was more poetic than I had anticipated and also more direct and violent, both qualities which made it worth reading. The character of Boone Caudill was intriguing. He was bold and adventurous, but not necessarily heroic. Some of his deeds were admirable and others were downright loathsome. In my estimation, Guthrie provided a realistic portrayal of a man who would run from domesticated society in More...

A few promising moments nearly pulled this story from the two star range, however, I cannot forgive the first 250 pages of which the story seems lost by the author's notion that every single blade of grass and how it sways in the breeze needs a description. I accept the book for what it is, a portrait of the frontier, both the landscape and the lifestyle, yet I feel the story sputtered and was difficult to get into amidst pages dense with unnecessary description. I'm all for painting a picture, More...

I just read this book for a Western Literature class. I believe it was the first "western" I've ever read and I was pleasantly surprised. The prose is lyrical in places, the characters well-developed and compelling, and the setting is absolutely fascinating. Some people complain about the misogyny in this book, but I think it's there because Guthrie gave us an accurate representation of a place and time. The book's greatest strength is that it is painfully realistic.

A debut novel written in the vernacular gives a realistic view of the west before it was changed by pioneers and civilization. The principle character is a white savage who contributes to the destruction of what he loves. The author won a Pulitzer for his second novel, The Way West, although many believe The Big Sky is better. He also was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay Shane. I wonder if this book could be published in today's PC world.

Excellent, excellent book! Truly a great American novel. I generally feel about westerns the same way I feel about space books, but much like Ender's Game, this book has changed my whole outlook on the genre. This book was voted the best western novel of all time and with good reason. It is the first in a series of six novels. I am going to start the second, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Read this book! Do it now, you won't be sorry!

The forward is by one of my favorite authors, Wallace Stegner. This is a good sign.
This is not really the type of book I would have chosen to read if it weren't for my "Swim Team Moms" book club. I really liked it. I'd rank it with Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner and East of Eden by John Steinbeck. The characters are well developed and I found myself liking even the least-likely character.
This is the first in a series of six books about America's move west. I will definitely try the next one, More...

This amazing story is set in the developing West back in the early to mid-1800s. It is an exceptional piece of work that paints a stunning portrait of the Oldwest. It's a very complex and multifaceted work with characters that are some of the best developed that I've ever read in any genre. This book brought up just about every emotion available in a human being. A masterfully written novel.

Very picturesque and packed with adventure, it captured the reality of the earliest western “mountain men.” Some stark violence that took me a-back and really made me think about the “wild west”. Definitely an eye-opener. (in the old film, the events are dissimilar and softened.) Guthrie has a writing style that complements this genre - can be annoying, but is easily understood.

Published in 1947 and the first in a loose trilogy of novels set in the early West (the second book, The Way West, won the Pulitzer in 1950), the main character in this book is Boone Caudill, who runs away from his home in Kentucky and heads West to become a mountain man. I generally liked the book and plan on reading the second book at some point.

This book is used in universities as a prime example of the Western novel genre. However, it is about mountain men and Native Americans rather than cowboys. (They hadn't arrived yet.) A. B. Guthrie writes about those times very realistically. I could believe that all of the events in the book happened. If I were rating it for being a very well-written example of its genre, I would give it 4 stars. For anyone wanting to read a non-idealized version of the west, this is a great novel. I think it w More...

This is an excellent book. The story follows a young boy who leaves his home in Kentucky, and heads west. He travels to Indian country. He lives the life of a mountain man. He marries an Indian girl. Life was hard and he had many difficult situations to deal with in order to survive. Author, A.B. Guthrie is a Pulitizer Prize Winner.

I really enjoyed this book. One of my co-workers is a prolific and eclectic reader and would leave his books in the office. I was new on the night shift and when it was slow I would sit down in my comfy chair and savor each morsal of prose as one might eat a warm chocolate chip cookie fresh from the oven.

Although it was a work of fiction, it seemed to give a view of the West that was realistic - grimy, unpredictable, and violent. I liked the story itself, though the main character definitely wasn't a 'likable' sort, but I did have to force myself through some parts because it felt a bit tedious.