By Jim Ewing Special to the Clarion Ledger
Shannon Burke’s Into the Savage Country takes place in the western territories of the late 1820s with the clash of cultures of Britain, France, Spain, Russia and American Indian tribes, providing a gripping series of adventures.
William Wyeth, the protagonist, finds himself Out West having been disinherited by his father in Pennsylvania, and fighting the seeming curse laid upon him that he would never amount to anything for his inability to settle down into the civilized, farming life of his brothers. In this new world where he has found himself, he is at once confronted with prairies so wide, mountains so tall, vistas so broad, the silence so deafening it makes even the brashest of men seem small.
“I had come west to satisfy some restless craving, to sound the depths inside myself,” he reminisces. He finds that, and much more. Written in the form of a memoir, with accurate renditions of the clothing, speech and mannerisms of the mountain men, the citified dandies of St. Louis and various native tribes, Savage rings of authenticity as a historical novel should.
It skips across the more mundane aspects of frontier life, but zeroes in on key moments to make the tale hard to put down. The result is a portrait of life in all its hardship and monotony interspersed with mortal terror — not only at the hands of men, but by animals and the elements — along with brief moments of pure joy and abject awe.
Along the way, the reader matures as does Wyeth, coming to a greater understanding of the life of a trapper, seeing firsthand the rapidly changing landscape wrought by the influx of American settlers and the loss of the wildness of the continent.
The whole scope of the journey is shifted with this understanding, as the good and bad elements of “civilization” take their toll. Our pilgrim becomes transformed through the alchemy of the camaraderie of men, and how they change through hardship and association, their achievements, bonding and treachery.
And, of course, there is a woman. The Canadian half-breed Alene Chevalier is at once wild and wise, the daughter of a French trapper father and native mother, who knows more about life on the frontier than Wyeth can guess. He longs achingly and incessantly for her but risks the achievement of her love for this “restless craving” for adventure outside of the charms of her arms. Which allure proves stronger is a question that challenges and defines him.
Overall, Savage Country is a remarkable journey into the wild, untrammeled wilderness of a young man’s soul.
Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at The Clarion-Ledger, is the author of seven books including Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them, in stores now.
Comments are closed.