Fair Land, Fair Land

The Big Sky #3

by A.B. Guthrie Jr.

With his revered classics The Big Sky and The Way West, A. B. Guthrie, Jr., claimed his preeminent post as the father of the western epic. Fair Land, Fair Land, first published in 1982, marks the sequel to his two masterworks and rounds out a chronological gap, the mid-nineteenth century, in Guthrie's Big Sky series. Reappearing here is Dick Summers, of the earlier sagas, now a wizened conservationist who seeks retribution from his former compatriot Boone Caudill and renewed companionship with the self-reliant Teal Eye. Imbued with a rich sense for the impermanence of the idyllic plains, this tour de force offers a stirring commentary on a country's physical and spiritual erosion, as relevant today as it was a decade ago.

Genres: Westerns, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Adventure, Historical, Americana, American

272 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1982

About the author

Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr. was an American novelist, screenwriter, historian, and literary historian who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction during 1950 for his novel The Way West.

After working 22 years as a news reporter and editor for the Lexington Leader, Guthrie wrote his first novel.

Ηe was able to quit his reporting job after the publication of the novels The Big Sky and The Way West (1950 Pulitzer Prize).

Guthrie died during 1991, at age 90, at his ranch near Choteau.

(Source - Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Lori Keeton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Continuing the story of the American West through the eyes of Dick Summers in Fair Land, Fair Land, A. B. Guthrie tells a deeper and more spiritual story of his most agreeable character. Dick Summers has already demonstrated his abilities to hunt, trap and live as a mountain man in The Big Sky. His knowledge of the country west of the Missouri River led him to guide a wagon train bound for Oregon in The Way West. Now Dick has returned to the land he knows deep inside his soul to see the places he now remembers with affection. He reflects that although he is older now, “Time” is inevitable but what a man defines life by are the events and changes that occur throughout.

Time, he thought, getting up and going on. There was no such thing as time, then, now or ever. Time was always. It was the changes, trappings along the way, that a man reckoned his life by. Rendezvous dead and gone, along with plenty of those who had enjoyed it. Beaver nigh gone. Fur companies and some sometime mountain men making out with coarse furs. Before a man knew it the buffalo might all be killed off. Another marking, another trapping to reckon by. That was the way of men and things. Find a good country and spoil it.

Dick’s journey this time is one that finds him considering the finality of this lifestyle for himself and the Indians. They have always lived for necessity, killing only what what they needed for survival and watching their livelihoods diminish and deplete with the arrival of people seeking gold or land. They didn’t understand the staking of claims to the land which they believed belonged to all of them. The Army was setting up forts and the government was beginning to regulate the land and force Indians onto reservations. Dick Summers had a sadness in his countenance and it was evident to his friend Higgins who became his companion in these latter years. What Dick came to realize and accept was that change was happening to their world and it was something that would continue to happen whether it was good or bad.

”So the land is ours, but the white man still comes. He builds his own lodges where we are owners. He kills our buffalo. Sometimes he kills us. He moves on our land, scratching for the yellow metal. It is part of the land. Yes? It belongs to us. I cannot understand.”

His connection to his surroundings shows how much he loved God’s creation. He didn’t want it wasted and destroyed by those who were coming to shoot for sport and not for the pot. Sadly he knew it couldn’t be helped. Dick’s desire would have been for the conservation of the land and wildlife and for leaving the Indians alone. He lived the red man’s way of life and saw the earth and all upon it something to be treasured.

He went on, letting the air and the sky and the earth sink into him. It was more than the lungs that this country filled. It was the eye and the spirit and the whole of the body from top-knot on down. How many times had he just sat and looked? How many times, seeing, had he felt part and partner of what he saw? Never enough times. Each time was a new time, born fresh from the old, close kin to it, showing likeness, but still new.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is there all right, until a man gets to it. Then it ain’t there. It’s here, and here is what you wanted to get away from in the first place.

In the third installment of A.B. Guthrie’s Big Sky series, Guthrie continues the story of Dick Summers, mountain man and wagon train guide and, now, a man searching for a way to face life in a changing west. Setting out to revisit the wild places of his youth, Summers and his friend, Higgins, stumble across Teal Eye, an Indian girl from Summers’ past.

Perhaps the tales of how the West was won have become cliches, but the plight of the Indians and the destruction that came with the taming of the West are very hard to witness in the hands of a skilled storyteller. I mourned for their way of life, disappearing before their eyes, and for the inability of the army and settlers to recognize them as human beings and offer any respect or concern.

There is a new character, a Methodist preacher named Potter, who contributes another view of the well-intended, but sorely misguided, missionary. I loved his goodness and his philosophy concerning God. Too few of those around him heeded his advice.

“I worship a glad lord,” Potter told him. “We have set our faces against sin, as indeed we must, but in doing it I fear we have lost sight of joy. Joy, Brother Summers, delight in what we are given. Often I think God not only wants us to be good but to be radiant.”

Dick Summers will go down in my ledgers as one of the most wonderful characters ever written. In a preface, Guthrie tells us this book was written much later than the earlier ones and was intended to fill a gap that had been left. I, for one, am so glad he decided to fill that gap. I would have hated to have left this part of Dick Summers’ story untold--to have just seen him wander off, seeking wilderness, at the end of The Way West, and never to have been heard of again.

So many good men who have lived have been forgotten and carried all they knew and loved to the grave. In fact, that is the case with most men, but, even unremembered as individuals, they may have had a huge impact on the shaping of a country and the lives that came after them.

“Live and Learn, they say, but don’t say all the while you’re learnin’, you’re forgettin’, too, until maybe at the last it’s just a big forgettin’.

[Sue K H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fair, Fair Land is the 3rd in time sequence of A.B. Guthrie's Big Sky series. This book is a lot shorter and less dense than either The Big Sky or The Way West. It doesn't have the many beautiful landscape descriptions of "The Big Sky" or as many varied personal characters and reflections as The Way West, but what it lacks in scope it makes up for in intimacy.

Guthrie wrote this last, writing two others prior that didn't have Summers or Boone in them. He must have felt as unsettled as I did with the ending of "The Big Sky". Here he ties up some loose and unsatisfying ends of that and gives more needed character development to Teal Eye. It is also an ode to Dick Summers, who left The Big Sky too early and didn't end up where he wanted to be in The Way West. He was my favorite character from each of the other two. I already loved him completely but each novel reveals even more depth to him.

Fair, Fair Land starts where The Way West left off in Oregon as Summers takes off for a journey more to his liking, back to The Big Sky country he loved. He's partnered with Higgins who admires him and wants to go along as an apprentice to learn his self-sufficient ways. Higgins is a wonderful character who provides comic and musical relief. It takes Summers a bit to warm up to him but they become the best of friends and compliment each other perfectly.

There is one point where Summers is talking to Higgins about Dave Jackson "a true Mountain Man" of Jackson's Hole and Higgins asks him what happened to him. Summers says " Nobody knows. He was here and then he wasn't. He's not the only one" then Summers reflects to himself:

" they came, the mountain men did, and some drowned and some starved and some froze. Some got rubbed out by Indians or died in fights among themselves. Some fell off passes or got kicked by a horse or killed by a bear, like old Hugh Glass, who was too tough to die, though, and made it back to the Missouri, wounds and all. It made a man wonder how anyone was left."

One of the things I love about Dick Summers is that he is a realist. Though he loves this life, he knows that it's also one that even the most motivated can't always survive. As much as he wants to be away from crowds in the unspoiled territory and resents how swarms of people are destroying it, he is able to reflect in a way that makes sense of it without demonizing those who are different than him. As he lays down for the night after a meeting with a Blackfeet chief where they worry about what is to come, he reflects:

"... Summers thought he was anyhow partway a liar. He knew what the moons would bring if not all of it. But if there was no all-out answer, there was a downright fact. People. All of them wanting land or riches or maybe just a handhold on life. Come down to it, he thought and grinned a sour grin inside himself, he was a mite greedy himself, wanting the land kept open and free just for his sake. "

I bonded so strongly with Summers for the way he harkens back to a simpler time and resents some of the progress but I know that I'm no Dick Summers and would probably have not made it in the harshest survival of the fittest type environment. I love that Summers could see that not everyone was cut out to be mountain men and women.

I was so disappointed in The Big Sky because of the ending but Guthrie does an amazing job showing the progression and how those mountain men paved the way for the rest of us, for better or worse. As the land erodes so does the human spirit as some commit heinous acts.

I'd love to say more about this story but it's hard to do without spoilers. The relationships between Summers and others were beautiful. Teal Eye, Higgins, Reverand Potter, Lijie, Little Wing, Nocansee, and Heavy Runner were all great characters too. There are many wonderful scenes and touching moments. It was the perfect ending to the other two and it makes me want to go back and read the last 44 pages of The Big Sky that I hastily walked away from. Someday, I'll reread the whole series.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the last published of Guthrie's six novels about the American West, chronologically Fair Land fits into the series as the third installment, just behind the Pulitzer Prize winning The Way West. Covering the years 1845-1880, the somewhat episodic plot follows Dick Summers, former mountain man and series favorite character, as he sets out to immerse himself in a wilderness that has become more crowded with white settlers and explorers. Although the book can be enjoyed on its own merits, it does feature characters and make reference to events from The Big Sky and The Way West and is best enjoyed as a part of that series. As usual, the land and its living beings, including Native Americans, plays a central role in the story, highlighted by Guthrie's reverent and effusive praise for the natural world that has slipped away from our modern lives.

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fair Land, Fair Land continues the Big Sky series, within which this is number 3. It is the continued unfolding story of Dick Summers, an authentic and unforgettable hero, and the settling of the American West, portrayed vividly throughout a book that is hard to put down.

Like McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, these books seem like they should be essential reading in American literature. If you haven’t read them, I would start with The Way West, which is number 2 in the series, and then backfill the previous history with The Big Sky, before moving on. Although they can be read as stand alone novels, I think you will enjoy them most in this sequence.

Not wanting to leave this world, I will be continuing to read the series, thankful that Guthrie has written more.

[Harold Titus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read all of A. B. Guthrie Jr.'s western series and enjoyed them all. Fair Land, Fair Land is not quite up to the quality of "The Big Sky" and "The Way West" but it is a must read for anyone that has read these earlier novels. Dick Summers is one of the most engaging characters I have come across. Verbally succinct, decisive in action, Summers adheres to a moral code that makes him an exceptional human being in a harsh, frequently cruel environment.

This book had to be written for two reasons. One, readers of Guthrie's first two books (and I) wanted to learn of the fates of Boone Caudill, Summers's dark-hearted protege in "The Big Sky," and Teal Eye, Caudill's abandoned squaw. Two, the novel fills a gap in the timeline of Guthrie's series of Western novels, demonstrating skillfully the end of the mountain man era and the ascendency of frontier army control over the Rocky Mountain Indian population.

[Brian E Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

This third and final volume of The Big Sky Trilogy follows the trilogy’s hero, Dick Summers, as he leaves the settlers he led to Oregon and returns to the mountainous area of east Idaho, western Wyoming and Montana he had previously spent years hunting and trapping in.
This book has a different feel than the previous two volumes. The first two books involved leisurely paced travels accompanied by detailed descriptive passages that lent grandeur and an epic feel to the stories. This volume does not dwell on the environmental surroundings as much and moves the story at a faster pace giving it more of a suspenseful thriller feel as the reader awaits both the outcome of the potential confrontation of Summers with a former friend, Boone Caudill, and the hopefully successful outcome of Summers’ life in the West.
This really worked for me during the first 2/3 of the novel. Guthrie still writes in his precise yet descriptive style just with less description in this story. Additionally, the suspense was such a pleasant experience that I welcomed the faster pace that helped build the suspense.
Unfortunately, I thought the story quality faded some during the last 1/3 as Guthrie’s resolution of both the Summers/Caudill relationship and Summers’ life in the West were disappointing in some way. However, in Guthrie’s defense, this trilogy, while a story of some great individual characters, is primarily a story about the development of that area of the West during that specific time period. As Guthrie’s ending to this trilogy stays true to that larger story of this particular place and time, it should be considered a successful ending. I’m trying to view it that way.
Overall, this was a very good and very American trilogy that I feel fortunate to have read. Each volume of the trilogy is slightly different.
The Big Sky is an epic Greek tragic tale of the journey of some larger than life, one could call Homeric, protagonists, on an adventurous and dangerous journey. These Homeric protagonists live a lifestyle beyond what the reader could see themselves living. These are characters that excite and interest the reader, but perhaps ones the reader admires rather than identifies with.
The Way West, while partially an epic tale of a journey led by a Homeric figure, is really more the story of the ordinary people he led out west, characters looking for a better but traditional family life. They are ordinary people on an extraordinary journey to obtain an ordinary life. These are characters that the reader could identify with and lifestyles they could see themselves living. As a bonus, the reader still has the Homeric character of Dick Summers for someone to glorify and admire.
Fair Land Fair Land is the least epic of the three and is more of a thriller as it picks the pace up to build some suspense for the reader as he/she anxiously awaits the final fate of the main characters, especially Dick Summers. I rate this third volume of the trilogy at 4 stars.

[Gabriele Carli · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Dick Summers salì il crinale che sovrastava la valle di canyon, ben felice di lasciarsi l'Oregon alle spalle. Era partito senza nemmeno dire addio ai pionieri che l'avevano assunto come guida. Gli addii lo facevano pensare alle lapidi. Sì, riposate pure in pace, zappaterra. Che il Signore vi benedica, uomini buoni e deboli. Speriamo che i vostri aratri vi ripaghino con fragole o meloni, o mele o altro.”

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Embracing the frontier-mountain-man life and the travels of Dick Summers. This book picks up where The Way West leaves off, along the Columbia River in Oregon. Dick Summers, the "main" character in all 3, decides to leave the settlers and head back east toward the Plains of Montana. Higgins, another of the settlers, goes along with him.

Guthrie's writing style can pull you in and scenic descriptions are done fairly well. This edition actually has a map of the region that was mid 19th century, so that is an added bonus.

Would have given this book 5 stars, but the conflict with Boone Caudill, dating back to the first novel, was short and not played out very well, so left me disappointed.

The ending was very sad was well, and was somewhat abrupt.

Guthrie takes you through the Bitterroots, the Tetons, and the Rocky Mountains of Montana for most of the story, with interactions with the Blackfeet and Shoshone tribes.

We see how one hearkens to keeping life simple but yet sees progress coming and cannot do anything about it.

In many respects Guthrie lays out the issue of over-hunting and killing for sport, and the sad state of affairs of the tribal nations and the conflict with the U.S. army.

[Shirley (stampartiste) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I again loved this (the third) book in The Big Sky series and cannot wait to continue the journey with the fourth book in the series, These Thousand Hills, with several other friends on Goodreads. Reading these books has been such an absorbing journey through the past, reliving the mid to late 1800s in the western United States through the eyes of the larger than life Dick Summers.

There was a gap of roughly 30 years between Guthrie’s writing of the second and the fourth books in the series, and this one answered every reader’s most important question: What happened to Dick Summers? Guthrie had humanized Summers to such an extent that the reader wanted to follow his story to the end. Not only did Guthrie answer that question, but in his own inimitable style, he also continued the story of the western migration and its effects on the land and the native peoples. So much of this is heartbreaking.

As with his first two books in The Big Sky series, Guthrie has the ability to transport the reader back to that time and place of so much change and upheaval in the American West. He is such an amazing writer and scholar and is well deserving of the acclaims and the Pulitzer Prize he won.

[Dennis McClure · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guthrie went back and wrote this one in after the fact. If a gap in his magnificent saga bothered him, he had every right to fill it.

And his magnificent way with his characters and his words... He is Guthrie. Enough said.

I'm addicted to the series, and I'm not capable of leaving any part out.

That said, it's not quite up to the standards of the rest. It just doesn't have as much to say.

So be it.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite Quotes:
There is there all right until a man gets to it. Then it ain't there. It's here, and here is what you wanted to get away from in the first place.
- Hig pg.22

[Mike Futcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Had he held it once, not knowing? Did it flutter there in his hand in those gone days… Where beaver swam in every stream, and a trapper knew his foot was first on the land and he walked with the gods of the world?" (pg. 62)

The third book, chronologically speaking, in A. B. Guthrie's Big Sky series, Fair Land, Fair Land was the last to be written and published. Alas, something seems to have been lost in the 30+ year gap since the publication of its predecessor, The Way West. Nevertheless, a book that doesn't reach the heights of those two earlier books is still scaling a significant altitude, and Fair Land, Fair Land remains a rewarding read.

The biggest surprise in Fair Land was its impatience. The greatest quality in The Big Sky and The Way West was the way they went along at their own loping gait; both pace and prose took their time and this was of great reward to those readers who were willing to treat with them on their own terms. Fair Land, however, opts for a more streamlined text. There is little of the introspection or the descriptive passages that were so beautiful in the previous two books, and we don't get the sense of the land that we got there.

The heart doesn't swell as it did before, and while this makes sense somewhat – considering the characters' unspoiled West is now being settled and disrupted – it doesn't explain why plot points are cooked to a similar short-order. The coincidental way Summers meets up with Teal Eye lacks storytelling grace, and given the build-up I expected the encounter with Boone Caudill to be of greater substance. The couple of pages he is given, without much in the way of reflection, is disappointing considering he was the protagonist of The Big Sky. The way this particular plot point was resolved left me feeling a bit short-changed. The reluctance to dig deep wells is understandable, given that such things require stamina and Guthrie was by the time of Fair Land more than 80 years old, but it doesn't change the taste. There is little of the simmering that makes a soup.

That said, Fair Land, Fair Land is still plenty rewarding. The best part is being back with the main character Dick Summers, the quintessential mountain man "at home in the world" (pg. 24), as he talks with others with an "easy smile and gray eyes and all-around competence" (pg. 18). The book retains the sharp but unintrusive dialogue of its predecessors, and much of the book's grace comes from being in the company of Summers. The return of Teal Eye (from The Big Sky) and Higgins (a promising but relegated character in The Way West) are also enjoyable.

The book as a whole is enjoyable, but it carries with it a sense of obligation. This time period (1845-1870) was a blank patch in Guthrie's career-defining Western tapestry, and he's here to tie off the loose ends of Dick Summers, Boone Caudill and Teal Eye – for posterity. And so when Summers sets off from the west coast to go back east, putting "the promised land… behind them" (pg. 38) to re-tread old ground, there seems to be a sort of metatextual acceptance on Guthrie's part – as on Summers' – that it won't match up to what came before.

Fortunately, alongside its sense of obligation, Fair Land, Fair Land also carries with it great characters, pathos, and that unmatchable landscape. The story and its telling may not be on par with its two predecessors, but Guthrie can still move us considerably. "Give [me] a far reach of eye," Dick Summers asks on page 4, "the grasses rippling, the small streams talking, buttes swimming clear a hundred miles away". And sure enough he gets it, or at least enough of it to satisfy a man who knows he's reaching the end of his story. Guthrie gives it to us too, and we too are satisfied.

[Ricky Orr · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of Dick Summers, the keel-boat hunter and mountain man in "The Big Sky" and the trail guide for the settlers headed to Oregon in "The Way West", continues and comes to a conclusion in "Fair Land, Fair Land". As Summers foresaw decades earlier, the wilderness life of the mountains and prairies would change, and not for the better.

As the story opens, Summers and his new partner Higgins, leave Oregon late in the season after successfully leading a wagon train from Missouri to the Willamette Valley. Not knowing exactly where they want to go, they turn east and cross the Bitterroots into northwestern Montana, encounter the beautiful Teal Eye, and so decide to 'settle' in the Teton Valley west of the Marias River, in Blackfoot country.

This book can stand on its own, but might be more enjoyable after reading the first two books of this series. All three books are worthwhile...

[Kim Hampton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what the mountain man way of life was really like. Although it is a fiction book, it is pretty accurate about the way I think they would have felt and the things they would have experienced. Makes me long for the good old days when you could ride all day and never see another human being, until the white man had to destroy everything in the name of progress and greed. The Indians had the right idea.

[Margie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the third in the series of books about the West by Guthrie, and I loved revisiting some of my favorite characters. Other reviewers have indicated this is the weakest of the three and I’m inclined to agree, but absolutely don’t regret spending my time on it. Without giving too much away, I wish a couple of plot points had been different - perhaps fleshed out more fully. But I highly recommend this series for a full, unromanticized story of the West.

3.5 stars.

[Bobbi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know what happened to Guthrie's writing in this book, but it certainly was not the same as the first two in this trilogy. He was much older when he wrote this book, so perhaps that had some effect. I was disappointed as I had like the first two so much.

[Mark Egge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. In which Dick Summers becomes a "white indian" and lives out his days. Not much of a plot to this book, weird anachronistic language, and fanciful story elements that make the book seem childish at times. Not my favorite of the series.

[Old Man JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as Big Sky and The Way West

[Candace Simar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. The writer used beautiful descriptions, fresh language and historical details to make this story live on the pages.

[Scott Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved it! Not as well-developed as the previous two books in the series, but true to the series with an ending that we could see coming, but dreaded the reading of it.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

An author that knows his sagas.

[Jeanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreakingly wonderful book

[Christian Schwoerke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel closes out the Big Sky trilogy, which began with that same-named novel and progressed with The Way West. As in that latter novel, Dick Summers is the principal character. He is a 45-year-old mountain man, tired of the tempestuous turmoil of having led a wagon train to Oregon. He has a longing to return to the open reaches of the Big Sky country, to re-capture the spirit of the open country and rekindle his own vital spirit. At the same time, he is also phlegmatic about the prospect, already certain that things have changed, that there will be no wholesale rejuvenation.

The novel ambles in a pleasant, desultory way, and Summers early on teams up with a younger man, Hezekiah Higgins, who breaks away from his cattle droving party, admiring Summers and wanting to apprentice himself to his experience and vision. They remain steady companions for almost ten years, though for about five of those years, Higgins is the odd man out, as Summers has met with Boone Caudill’s cast-off Blackfoot squaw, Teal Eye, whom he lives with and then marries in a dawn ceremony conducted by an itinerant preacher. The three are nomadic for a time, then try to settle in bountiful wilderness.

Summers has long held in the back of his mind a meeting with Boone, who had killed their mutual friend, Jim Deakins, in the jealous and mistaken belief that Teal Eye bore his son (all events in the first of the trilogy, The Big Sky). When they do meet, and Summers tries to get Boone to admit his mistake, to acknowledge the need for remorse and contrition, Boone attempts to kill Summers, and it is only the last-second arrival of Higgins, discharging a bullet in Boone’s head, that saves Summers’ life.

Gold fever brings prospectors, miners, speculators, and settlers. For a time Summers and Higgins are willing to work around the imposition to maintain their homestead, earning themselves heaps of gold dust by hunting game and playing fiddle. But that détente with civilization ends when a sheriff tries to shake Summers down, and the three (along with two children), are once again on the move.

Higgins is found a Shoshone wife, and they live with Summers and Teal Eye for a happy spell, till she wants to be closer to her tribe. After Higgins and his wife leave, Summers and Teal Eye settle in foothills overlooking the plains, now absent of the buffalo that had once been plentiful. After only a few years, the army arrives with plans to relocate its Indian Affairs post, and Summers and Teal Eye are again on the move. They send their son Elijah off with Potter, the itinerant preacher, to better learn to read and to adjust to the encroachment of settlers.

Years later, now in his 70s, Summers acts on behalf of a Shoshone chief to have the US army better understand their needs and to more honestly hold to previous agreements. Summers’ son Elijah is now an interpreter for the military who are planning the retributive assault on the Shoshone. His hotheaded response to the arrogance and ignorance of the staff puts him in the stockades, and he watches from behind bars next morning as the cavalry sets off on its surprise attack of all the Shoshone tribes. Summers and his adult blind son (Boone’s boy) are victims in the massacre of the innocent Shoshone, and Teal Eye may or may not have escaped.

Guthrie brings back the ghosts of the past (Boone, Teal Eye, and Jim Deakins) and they color Summers’ last 25 years in Fair Land, Fair Land, as he sees the open spaces around him filling with people, wildlife receding and shrinking, Indians traduced and demeaned. Summers had long felt himself a relic of the past, and no matter his competence in the plains, forests, or mountains, he understood that his experience, expertise, and manner of living had lost any relevance in the new order. The novel’s bitter ending is barely tolerable, and Guthrie has linked that bitterness with a generosity of expression that wells in elegiac enthusiasm for what was and will never be again...

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

While this book, Fair Land, Fair Land, was written out of the sequence of 6, the author
said it was still a stand alone book. I found it as compulsive and interesting as the one that got the Pulitzer, The Way West. This series has drawn me to do a lot of historical reading about the American Indians and the wars between the Indians and those who took their lands.
The author presents a very strong tale laden with traceable historical detail. I liked it so much I was sorry to see it end.

[Jan Komrska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dick Summers delivers group of new settlers to Oregon and is on his way back to Missouri. He encounters Hezekiah Higgins who tells him a story of Boone Caudill. They find Teal Eye who lives lonely with her blind son Nocansee. Summers marry Teal Eye and they have son Elijah. Higgins marry Shoshone girl White Wing. He stumbles on some men heading for California, they saw Boone and expect him to arrive in 4 days. He alerts Summers and he comes to meet Boone. Hotheaded Boone tries to strangle Summers but Higgins comes to his rescue and shots him. Summers is asked to help Heavy Runner feeding his village. He moves his family there but sends off Elijah with a traveling priest so he could be educated first. Heavy Runner’s village is attached by US Army, Summers and Nocansee are killed, but Teal Eye escapes.

[Cherie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Following The Big Sky and The Way West, this book was written out of sequence but read by me chronologically. The main character, again, was Dick Summers but uncharacteristically he was acting out of revenge. That particular scene was minimalist and anticlamactic. Huh.

I hardly remember the rest of the story. Mainly it details the dying of The West as encountered by the first white explorers. It was not nearly as good as the first two books in the series. 2 stars.

[Lynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guthrie wrote this book last but it is actually the 3rd book in the series of four. Unfortunately, I got confused about this and read it last. This book reads like it was written decades after the 2nd book (it was) it lacks the character development of the others. However, it has some beautiful moments although the ending is devastatingly sad.

[Adam Weis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as good as the first two books, but still a page-turner. Most of the book didn't really have much of a plot but was still enjoyable. Ending was depressing and drew parallels with Fools Crow and Blackfoot history which was interesting.

[Wmacdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have loved this series and this book best of all. The sheer majesty of the unspoiled west and the palpable sadness of its decline infuse this novel. So many beautiful moments interspersed with humor, violence, and honest reflection. This one touched my soul.