PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction Best Book (nominee)
A vivid and revelatory novel based on actual events of the 1847 Oregon migration, A Sudden Country follows two characters of remarkable complexity and strength in a journey of survival and redemption.
James MacLaren, once a resourceful and ambitious Hudson's Bay Company trader, has renounced his aspirations for a quiet family life in the Bitterroot wilderness. Yet his life is overturned in the winter of 1846, when his Nez Perce wife deserts him and his children die of smallpox. In the grip of a profound sorrow, MacLaren, whose home once spanned a continent, sets out to find his wife. But an act of secret vengeance changes his course, introducing him to a different wife and mother: Lucy Mitchell, journeying westward with her family.
Lucy, a remarried widow, careful mother, and reluctant emigrant, is drawn at once to the self-possessed MacLaren. Convinced that he is the key to her family's safe passage, she persuades her husband to employ him. As their hidden stories and obsessions unfold, and pasts and cultures collide, both Lucy and MacLaren must confront the people they have truly been, are, and may become.
Alive with incident and insight, presenting with rare scope and intimacy the complex relations among nineteenth-century traders, immigrants, and Native Americans, A Sudden Country is, above all, a heroic and unforgettable story of love and loss, sacrifice and understanding.
Genre: Western
James MacLaren, once a resourceful and ambitious Hudson's Bay Company trader, has renounced his aspirations for a quiet family life in the Bitterroot wilderness. Yet his life is overturned in the winter of 1846, when his Nez Perce wife deserts him and his children die of smallpox. In the grip of a profound sorrow, MacLaren, whose home once spanned a continent, sets out to find his wife. But an act of secret vengeance changes his course, introducing him to a different wife and mother: Lucy Mitchell, journeying westward with her family.
Lucy, a remarried widow, careful mother, and reluctant emigrant, is drawn at once to the self-possessed MacLaren. Convinced that he is the key to her family's safe passage, she persuades her husband to employ him. As their hidden stories and obsessions unfold, and pasts and cultures collide, both Lucy and MacLaren must confront the people they have truly been, are, and may become.
Alive with incident and insight, presenting with rare scope and intimacy the complex relations among nineteenth-century traders, immigrants, and Native Americans, A Sudden Country is, above all, a heroic and unforgettable story of love and loss, sacrifice and understanding.
Genre: Western
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Used availability for Karen Fisher's A Sudden Country
Hardback Editions
August 2005 : USA Hardback
2005 : USA Hardback

Title: A Sudden Country: A Novel
Author(s): Karen Fisher
ISBN: 1-4193-5794-8 / 978-1-4193-5794-7 (USA edition)
Publisher: RB Large Print
Availability: Amazon
Paperback Editions
June 2006 : USA Paperback
Audio Editions
August 2005 : UK Audio edition

Title: A Sudden Country: A Novel
Author(s): Karen Fisher
Publisher: Books on Tape
Availability: Amazon UK
August 2005 : USA Audio CD
2005 : USA Audio Cassette

Title: A Sudden Country
Author(s): Karen Fisher
ISBN: 1-4159-2539-9 / 978-1-4159-2539-3 (USA edition)
Publisher: Books on Tape
Availability: Amazon
Kindle Editions
December 2007 : USA, Canada, UK Kindle edition