Looking Back - East of the Mountains

Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.

East of the Mountains by David Guterson

Fiction

1999 Harcourt Brace and Company

Read in December 1999

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

It is mid-October, 1997, harvest time in the Columbia Basin of central Washington state, a rich apple- and pear-growing region. Ben Givens, recently widowed, is a retired heart surgeon, once admired for his steadiness of hand, his precision, his endurance. He has terminal colon cancer. While Ben does not readily accept defeat, he is determined to avoid suffering rather than engage it. And so, accompanied by his two hunting dogs, he sets out through the mythic American West-sage deserts, yawning canyons, dusty ranches, vast orchards-on his last hunt. The main issues for Ben as a doctor had been tactical and so it would be with his death. But he hadn't considered the persuasiveness of memory-the promise he made to his wife Rachel, the love of his life, during World War II. Or life's mystery. On his journey he meets a young couple who are "forever," a drifter offering left-handed advice that might lessen the pain, a veterinarian with a touch only a heart surgeon would recognize, a rancher bent on destruction, a migrant worker who tests Ben's ability to understand. And just when he thinks there is no turning back, nothing to lose that wasn't lost, his power of intervention is called upon and his very identity tested. Full of humanity, passion, and moral honesty, East of the Mountains is a bold and beautiful novel of personal discovery.

My Original Thoughts (1999):

As I began reading this book, I thought it wasn't very good and it wasn't holding my interest. I continued reading and am glad I did. I thought it was pretty good. I was curious about Ben and what he would decide to do with his life. I found the dialogue a bit stiff, but enjoyed the flashbacks to when he met Rachel and his Army experiences. Lots of detail in some of those passages. Maybe a little overdone.

My Current Thoughts:

I loved Guterson's debut novel, Snow Falling on Cedars, which I've read a couple of times, so I was excited about this new novel. I enjoyed most of the writing, but remember that it was pretty slow at times and not nearly as good as his first book.