Far as the Eye Can See

August 18, 2014
As expansive as the country it traverses, Bausch’s majestic odyssey through the Old West finds rich nuance in a history often oversimplified. After the Civil War, hardscrabble veteran Bobby Hale heads toward California only to find that rampant violence plagues both his dreams and the vast landscape unrolling before him. Learning that trouble is everywhere, he leads a wagon train along the Oregon Trail, spends five seasons as a trapper, then reluctantly puts his knowledge of the land to use scouting for U.S. forces intent on rounding up native tribes. On one mission, he attacks a native peace party under the mistaken belief that they are warriors, violating the codes of whites and natives alike. As he tries to reach his home base near Bozeman, Mont., without incurring retaliation from either side, his encounters with a mixed-race woman, a young Indian boy, and the battling forces at Little Big Horn transform him. The novel’s patient, searching first-person narration is finely balanced, with a voice at once straightforward and lyrical, grand and particular. Bausch’s (Almighty Me!) characters defy facile judgments; each is sharply distinctive, yet all struggle to find a footing amid the clash of human difference that is, in Bobby Hale’s words, the “most spacious war of all.”

Starred review from October 15, 2014
Bausch (Out of Season, 2005, etc.) rides into frontier America for a tale of a Civil War veteran weary of "trouble and slaughter."Bobby Hale was a Union soldier-several times. He "skedaddled"-enlisted, took the bonus, deserted and enlisted again. Even so, Hale was in the ranks at bloody Fredericksburg and Chickamauga. Bausch's battle descriptions flash and roar-"I shot into smoke and noise...wounded men caught fire where they lay...even now the screams keep echoing in my skull." In 1869, equipped with a Colt Dragoon, an Evans repeater rifle, and his mare, Cricket, Hale hooks onto a pioneer wagon train led by a man named Theo and his Crow scout, Big Tree, "six and a half feet tall and solid as stone." En route to Oregon, they winter in Montana. Hale and Big Tree head into the Rockies to trap, an adventure lasting years. Then a Sioux woman, who'd latched onto Hale, decides she prefers Big Tree. Hale repairs to Fort Ellis, Montana, and winters in a Conestoga wagon with widows Christine and Eveline-"Those two women give me respite from strife and struggle"-before enlisting as a scout. Bausch's research makes real the violent period-sowbelly and hardtack, militias murdering Indians, freezing blizzards. Scouting, Hale kills White Dog, a warrior who'd earlier killed Big Tree. But White Dog was part of a peace party, and Hale deserts. On the run, Hale accidentally wounds Ink, a half-breed captive fleeing her husband. The pair stumble onto the Battle of Little Big Horn, "ground...littered with dead horses and dead soldiers and a few Indians," before trekking into the "land of the Nez Perce...where Ink is certain we can be happy, and live in peace." With a setting gleaming with historical accuracy and a protagonist whose voice is right out of Twain, Bausch's novel is a worthy addition to America's Western literary canon, there to share shelf space with The Big Sky, Little Big Man and Lonesome Dove.

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September 1, 2014

Two time lines merge in Bausch's latest novel: in 1876 Bobby Hale and a mixed-race woman named Diana, aka Ink, struggle to survive in the beautiful but unforgiving lands of Montana and the Dakota territories. The unlikely pair--Bobby shot Ink and nursed her back to health--are on the run from her warrior husband, the U.S. Army, and Native Americans. Flashback to 1869: at various turns a trapper, a scout, and a wagon-train leader, Civil War vet Bobby meets a number of folks--soldiers, settlers, native peoples--in his journey of survival and self-redemption. Bobby faces life and death judgments through both time lines. VERDICT With two novels selected as Washington Post favorites--A Hole in the Earth and Out of Season--Bausch (English, North Virginia Community Coll.) captures the immense measure of the American landscape in his descriptions of the western setting. While the flashback section plods along, once the 1876 trail is picked up again, the tension builds as Bobby and Ink find themselves witnesses to Custer's Last Stand. Not to be missed by historical fiction fans. [For another fictional take on the Battle of the Little Bighorn, see also John Hough Jr.'s Little Big Horn.--Ed.]--Wendy W. Paige, Shelby Cty. P.L., Morristown, IN

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