East of the Mountains - Couverture rigide

“A compassionate and masterful achievement.” —San Francisco Chronicle

”A strikingly joyful book and a monumental achievement.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“The writing is wonderful throughout, the characters are vivid...heartfelt, engaging and well drawn.” —The Miami Herald

“Profound and ambitious. . . . Guterson depicts . . . moral and spiritual struggle with a clear-eyed intensity and intelligence that gives East of the Mountains its essential authority.” —Chicago Tribune

“The shape is elegant, the tone is perfectly controlled, almost cool, and Guterson’s prose shines with [a] taut polish. . . .[He] is a craftsman with a sense of literary history, one of the most serious and accomplished young American writers.” –The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Guterson possesses a remarkable gift for capturing people and places, etching them into the reader’s mind.” –USA Today

“Elegiac . . . like his first novel, Guterson’s sophomore outing is a serious and surprising book. . . . A monumental achievement.” –The Philadelphia Inquirer

“In describing the world of a dying man, Guterson invokes the ultimate book of suffering–then, to his great credit, offers it here as a consolation rather than despair.” –The Boston Sunday Globe

“This book would be a challenge to praise too highly. It resounds with clarity. It feels like home.” –The San Diego Union-Tribune

“[Guterson] has produced a clean, unpretentious and expert piece of work, filled with the immediate beauty of everyday life and the desolation of leaving it behind.” –The Washington Times

“Wonderfully written, tender toward its characters, and full of incident and insight.” –Men’s Journal

Ben Givens is a retired heart surgeon who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Deciding to take charge of his own demise, Ben travels into the wild country of Washington state with his two dogs and his father's Winchester, to hunt one last time and then to end his life on his own terms. But, as with all quests, the Fates intervene. A car wreck introduces him to various helpers and hindrances, and gradually Ben undertakes a journey back through his own past. As he nears the apple-growing country in which he grew up, he recalls the signal events of his youth and manhood-especially his wartime experiences and his profound love for his wife of fifty years. Ben is transformed into an American Odysseus as he confronts the many sides of his own nature in a novel that radiates with the glories of the natural world and the mysterious permutations of the human heart.