Baker towers, the piles of slag dumped near the railroad siding for the Baker Coal Mines, are the reason that preWorld War II Bakerton, PA, exists; the company is the town, and the town is the company. The Novak family lives in a company house in the town's Polish section, shops at the company store, goes to the company hospital, and lives by the company time clock. When Stanley Novak drops dead from a massive heart attack, he leaves behind a wife and five children who must struggle to survive. During the war, employment is not too difficult to find even for the girls but finding a place in the world is a little more challenging. The children leave home and return. The miners go on strike. The eldest daughter marries the high school principal. The second-oldest daughter shocks her family by consorting with a divorced Italian. A catastrophic explosion eventually closes down the mines. The town, however, remains, and life continues as the world moves on.

This was the Costa Book of the Year (the former Whitbread Book Award), and it should win even more awards than that. Daringly, the author sets her work in Canada's frigid northern territory in the 19th century. As winter closes in on tiny Dove River, Mrs. Ross stumbles into the cabin of mysterious neighbor Laurent Jammet and finds him murdered. Distressingly, her adopted son Francis, something of an outsider himself, disappears at the same time. Francis is conveniently suspected of the deed, and the Company (which runs just about everything in this neck of the woods) sends Donald Moody to investigate. New to Canada, Donald struggles to find his way among the hardened settlers. Then another man, clearly native, is spotted in Jammet's cabin, arrested and beaten, and mysteriously released. In the ensuing mayhem, no one seems to have considered Mrs. Ross's devotion and resilience—she's gone to find her son. Plot summary cannot do justice to this complex and engrossing tale of human passion and folly, highlighted by the rigors of a wilderness being systematically despoiled. The characters are distinctive, their portraits startling and incisive, and the writing is fluid and beautifully detailed.

This was a novel that I could not put down and the characters were so beautifully depicted that I know each of them personally! A wonderful book and this is only this author's first novel. I can't wait to see what she comes up with next. A must read to any reader.

The story begins in Russia in the 1920s. Lillian Leyb survives the massacre of her family and runs away to New York City to live with a cousin. She allows herself to become the mistress of a star of the Jewish theater, and although she's not happy, life is not so bad. However, when she finds out that her daughter Sophie may still be alive in Siberia, she leaves everything she has and begins the journey home. She rides trains hiding in broom closets and servicing conductors. She climbs on boats and walks the Yukon trail headed for the Bering Strait and probably death. This novel tells the story of immigrant life and the caring of others.

The tone of this book was sweet and wistful, but the action was almost painfully slow. It moved, in fact, something like the seasons of the year, which along with the land, were characters in this story. The story of immigrant Nebraskan farmers of the early 20th century is mostly about how they lived rather than things that happened, and it takes about about three-quarters of the book before the action finally picks up a little.

I liked Willa Cather's eloquent and flowing style and the coloring of the land and its people. It reminded me a bit of an old, tinted, softly glowing, romantic movie of maybe 50 years ago. I also liked her animation of the land and weather, although I was bothered a little by its pantheistic flavor; the land, in fact, was the most animated character of the book.

In short, if you like a journey better than its destination, this is not a bad book. For myself, I need both journey and destination.

Erdrich tells the story of Fidelis Waldvogel, a WWI sniper and master butcher with a "talent for stillness" and for singing. After marrying Eva, the pregnant fiancee of his best friend, who was killed in the war, he emigrates to America. Settling in Argus, N.Dak., he and Eva establish a butcher shop known for its Old World expertise and for housing Fidelis's beloved singing club. The focus then shifts to Delphine Watzka, a performer in a traveling vaudeville act, who has recently returned to Argus to care for her alcoholic father, Roy. Roy's health problems pale beside his legal problems: the predatory Sheriff Hock is investigating how the Chavers family came to perish in Roy's basement. Not willing to abandon Roy, Delphine and her vaudeville partner, Cyprian Lazarre, a homosexual Ojibwa, set up house in Argus, where Delphine soon befriends Eva and develops a disturbing attraction to Fidelis. Erdrich's plot spans 36 years, covering two world wars, several violent deaths, near-deaths, illnesses, accidents and crimes-"awful things occurring to other humans," but somehow not to Delphine, who draws on reserves of toughness and compassion to sustain herself as well as the surprisingly vulnerable Waldvogel family. Excellent writing AND reading.