Wilderness: A Novel - Softcover

Weller, Lance

3.88

1,641 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1620400626 ISBN 13: 9781620400623

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2013

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Thirty years after the Civil War's Battle of the Wilderness left him maimed, Abel Truman has found his way to the edge of the continent, the rugged, majestic coast of Washington State, where he lives alone in a driftwood shack with his beloved dog. Wilderness is the story of Abel, now an old and ailing man, and his heroic final journey over the snowbound Olympic Mountains. It's a quest he has little hope of completing but still must undertake to settle matters of the heart that predate even the horrors of the war.

As Abel makes his way into the foothills, the violence he endures at the hands of two thugs who are after his dog is crosscut with his memories of the horrors of the war, the friends he lost, and the savagery he took part in and witnessed. And yet, darkness is cut by light, especially in the people who have touched his life-from Jane Dao-Ming Poole, the daughter of murdered Chinese immigrants, to Hypatia, an escaped slave who nursed him back to life, and finally to the unbearable memory of the wife and child he lost as a young man. Haunted by tragedy, loss, and unspeakable brutality, Abel has somehow managed to hold on to his humanity, finding way stations of kindness along his tortured and ultimately redemptive path.

In its contrasts of light and dark, wild and tame, brutal and tender, and its attempts to reconcile a horrific war with the great evil it ended, Wilderness tells not only the moving tale of an unforgettable character, but a story about who we are as human beings, a people, and a nation. Lance Weller's immensely impressive debut immediately places him among our most talented writers.

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About the Author:

Lance Weller has published short fiction in several literary journals. He won Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A Washington native, he has hiked and camped extensively in the landscape he describes. He lives in Gig Harbor, WA, with his wife and several dogs.

Review:

What's most gorgeous here is the language, Weller's descriptions of the natural world, the changing emotional terrain within his characters, and violence. The author seems to be reminding us that the Wilderness remains both without and within. A remarkable debut, deeply affecting and heartfelt * Gil Adamson, author of The Outlander * Epic ...There is much to savour in this big, bold debut, including Weller's splendid descriptions of wildlife encountered in the trek ...This is a novel in which history's sound and fury is drowned out at last by the silence of the wilderness * Financial Times * This portrait of a life is built up masterfully by Weller, in his debut novel, into a compassionate tale ... There is lots of great, descriptive landscape writing here, and all the flashbacks to the war are rendered in just as much evocative detail. It's a beautiful novel, resplendent in ornate, flowing prose * Herald * An American Civil War epic for fans of Cold Mountain ... Traumatising, character-driven and written with serious literary intent * We Love This Book *

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