Single Tree - Hardcover

Svee, Gary D.

2.88

17 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802741428 ISBN 13: 9780802741424

Publisher: Walker & Co, 1994

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Traveling to Montana envisioning a beautiful and bountiful land, the Wilders find their dreams dashed by the prairie vastness under a relentless sun, until the appearance of a single tree and its promise of water brings them hope.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

A slight tale of the ``rustler hunts'' of the early 1880s, during which ranchers banded together in vigilante groups and lynched anyone suspected of cattle stealing, or anyone who just happened to be in their way. Svee (Incident at Pishkin Creek, 1989) has assembled a cast so large that the story has no center. It begins with Samuel Wilders, his wife, Sarah, and their two children heading west in search of land to farm. Destitute, the Wilderses halt on the Montana prairie, where Samuel leaves his family to trade guns for fresh horses and meets his fate at the hands of the vigilantes. The burden of the plot then shifts to the killers' leader, Tolkien, and to Runs Toward, an Indian raised by one of the vigilantes, who leaves the group. Runs Toward has psychic premonitions, and readers are privy to key events in his childhood, but the only character with any real depth in the book is the evil Tolkien, a crazed man with a thirst for blood and an uncanny ability to manipulate people. Instead of using the rustler hunts to explore the conflict between the old West and encroaching civilization, the spirit of the wilderness and the businessman's idea of private property, charismatic leadership and demagoguery, Svee gives us a bland landscape in which all women are lovely and true even in the face of death, all Indians are savage but spiritually advanced, and all cowboys are long-suffering innocents. The book's real raison d'ˆtre is its graphic depiction of murder in several nastily detailed scenes. Except for Sam Wilders's, each killing seems inevitable: horrible, but somehow fitting. Tolkien is such a capable death- dealer, in fact, that it is unconvincing when Runs Toward finally makes him see the light. A jarring, bumpy narrative with a few poetic moments and the occasional implausible psychological insight. -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Booklist:

In Montana in the late 1880s, the ranchers and their cattle ruled the land. Where there was cattle, there was rustling, and where there was rustling, there was vigilante justice. Svee, a native Montanan and western novelist of considerable depth, combines the sweep of history with a cast of memorable fictional characters, revealing in the process both the era's limitless promise and its dark underside. Runs Towards was adopted as a boy by Eli Gilfeather, an itinerant cowboy. Now, years later, they split up with intentions to meet later in Canada and start a ranch. Eli is forced to ride with Tolkien, a rancher whose idea of justice is to hang anyone he suspects of rustling. One he suspects, captures, and hangs is Sam Wilders, a young family man from the plains headed west to start a new life. Wilders' family, unaware of his fate, starves until Runs Towards finds and adopts them, much as Eli saved Towards years before. The vigilante madness led by Tolkien and his marauders continues until Runs Towards exacts some small justice for his new family. Svee, who won the Golden Spur award for Sanctuary in 1990, again displays an uncommon grasp of both western history and human relationships. Wes Lukowsky

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