The Way West (The Big Sky, #2) in Never too Late to Read Classics

May 11, 2021 Sara rated it it was amazing

Shelves: american-west, american, american-classics, travel, western, pulitzer-prize-winners, historical-fiction, animals

This book might be as close as you will ever come to knowing what it was like to leave Independence, Missouri in 1836 and make your way by wagon along the Oregon Trail to the wilderness that was Oregon. Lije Evans, his wife Rebecca, and his son Brownie are one of a group of families who sign on with a wagon train to make the journey, and they represent, in my eyes, the perfect depiction of the kind of strong individuals who carved out this new land into civilization. During the journey, Lije dis This book might be as close as you will ever come to knowing what it was like to leave Independence, Missouri in 1836 and make your way by wagon along the Oregon Trail to the wilderness that was Oregon. Lije Evans, his wife Rebecca, and his son Brownie are one of a group of families who sign on with a wagon train to make the journey, and they represent, in my eyes, the perfect depiction of the kind of strong individuals who carved out this new land into civilization. During the journey, Lije discovers himself as a leader and we discover that a good man can be a strong man; that a quiet man can make all the noise that is needed.

There is one more member of the Evans family that I have not mentioned, but for whom I developed a great attachment, the dog, Rock. At the outset of the story, there is a move to kill all the dogs, many thinking they would be a nuisance on such a long trip. Evans figured he would have some business with the man who came to shoot Rock. That was the moment I knew I was going to love Lije, no going back.

My favorite character, by far, however, was Dick Summers. A seasoned mountain man who has been farming in Missouri, he signs on to pilot the group as far as the Dalles. I recognized right away that without men like Dick, none of the others would have ever survived to do the settling. In fact, they would hardly have known how to get where they were going. What I loved the most about him, however, was his open mind; never thinking the world should be like him or give him any particular homage.

He didn’t blame the Oregoners as he had known old mountain men to do. Everybody had his life to make, and every time its way, one different from another. The fur hunter didn’t have title to the mountain no matter if he did say finders keepers. By that system the country belonged to the Indians, or maybe someone before them or someone before them. No use to stand against the stream of change and time.

I felt I got to know Dick Summers in a way that I could strangely relate to. Of course, his lost youth was danger and mountains and the capability to survive, but wasn’t he longing for what most of us older people long for?

At the nub of it did he just want his youth back? Beaver, streams, squaws, danger--were they just names for his young time?

When I went back to review the passages I had marked while reading, almost all of them were Dick. His was the voice that spoke to me.

Guthrie shows us the physical hardships of the journey, which would surely be enough to defeat most of us, but which we could all fairly well imagine; but he also shows us the emotional toll that such a choice entails. Makes you wonder how anyone ever had the courage to set out, particularly with children in tow. The thought of the women, visibly pregnant, prodding the oxen while walking the trail, wore me to a bone. Guthrie’s men are both strong and weak, as are the women, and he seems to know both sexes well...what makes them the same and what makes them different, and how much both were needed to make such an undertaking work at all.

She wondered if he felt the same as she did. Did any two people ever feel the same? Did ever one soul know another, though they talked at night, though sometimes in hunger and in isolation they sought to make their bodies one, the all-mother in her loneliness trying to take back home the lost child-man?

I could picture these people, a mix of quite different backgrounds and incomes, growing closer and more understanding or more leery and wiser as the migration became a way of life. I could feel how tired and weary they felt at the end of even a good day. I could see the young faces becoming withered and crusted by exposure to wind and sun, and the older faces becoming hardened and set. At the same time, I could feel the yearning they all shared to start a new life, find a new adventure, see something they had never seen before. If they were still heading trains West, and if I were thirty years younger, I could see myself being convinced by Guthrie that the travails would be worth it; that Oregon could be home, and that a sturdy wagon and a good man might be all you would need.
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Mar 03, 2022 Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-2022, historical-fiction, frontier-western, classics, pulitzer, american-lit, 60-before-60

The Way West by A B Guthrie, Jr tells the story of one wagon train company making the trip west to Oregon from Independence, Missouri. It is a beautifully written story about a large group of people traveling west on this arduous and dangerous journey, looking to make a better life. The characters are so real and different from each other that they quickly become friends and enemies to the reader.

Their motivations for making the trek are unique. While one is running from the life he wants to esc ...more

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Jun 14, 2021 Shirley (stampartiste) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-classics, pulitzer-prize-winners

I loved this book! I cannot give it enough stars. One of my favorite subjects to read about is the description of the land and the people who inhabited the land west of the Mississippi River during the 1800s. I view it as a story of open spaces, choices, struggle and survival.

Guthrie wrote a book like no other. The Way West is the second in his series, and this one describes pioneers migrating west along the Oregon Trail. Guthrie described the land, the people and the hardships of the journey so ...more

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