This novel was part western and part romance. Not my usual type of book, but it was a good story.
Ulysses Pope (Popovich) marries Gretta and they have two sons, Eli & Danny. Danny is pretty frail and consistently needs his mother's caring.
Ulysses leaves one day and does not come back. He is search of something from his past that he has not shared with his family. His two sons venture on their own to find him and they are really young. Gretta then takes off to find him and comes to an errant conclusion about him.
There is much description in the book and it makes you want to envision everything that they are seeing.
Ulysses Pope (Popovich) marries Gretta and they have two sons, Eli & Danny. Danny is pretty frail and consistently needs his mother's caring.
Ulysses leaves one day and does not come back. He is search of something from his past that he has not shared with his family. His two sons venture on their own to find him and they are really young. Gretta then takes off to find him and comes to an errant conclusion about him.
There is much description in the book and it makes you want to envision everything that they are seeing.
Strong characters making hard, sometimes incomprehensible choices, set this novel apart from the run-of-the-mill "Western". When Ulysses Pope walks away from his Minnesota home early one morning in 1886, he leaves behind a wife and two sons, worried at first, then apprehensive, then angry at what seems be a pointless desertion. As the story unfolds, all four main characters face challenges they had never expected.
This is the haunting story of the Pope family set in the late 19th century in the Great Plains. When Ulysses leaves without notifying anyone, his worried sons attempt to find him without their mother's knowledge. The sons, Eli and sickly Danny, follow a trail that leads them into the heart of the Great Plains' states; meanwhile, Gretta, their mother and Ulysses' wife, begins her own journey to find her sons and reunite the family. The strength of these characters individually and collectively is riveting, as is the bond that binds them. The history of this region during this timeframe is as fascinating as the story of the Pope family.
The High Divide by Lin Enger is the story of Ulysses, a man seeking absolution and redemption for his past and his wife Gretta and their boys Eli and Danny seeking to hold him close with their love. Through the story of the Pope family, the book also brings to life a history of the Minnesota plains in 1886. This book is a quietly powerful and beautifully haunting story.
See my complete review at: http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2014/10/the-high-divide.html
Reviewed for LibraryThing Early Reviewers program
See my complete review at: http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2014/10/the-high-divide.html
Reviewed for LibraryThing Early Reviewers program
