The Fields of Eden

by Richard S. Wheeler

Book Overview

In the mid 1840s, the trails from the Missouri frontier are clogged with pioneers searching for a new life in a remote land they call a new Eden. This is the story of the emigrants who go up against the British Hudson's Bay Company to overcome their shattered dreams and make possible the settlement of Old Oregon.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812579097
• ISBN13: 9780812579093
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

The Master of the Historical Novel of the West

Richard S. Wheeler proves with every new book that he is the undisputed master of the historical novel of the American West -- a fact known to his colleagues in Western Writers of America, Inc., who have awarded him three Spur Awards for his work, and this year will bestow on his their Owen Wister Award for lifelong contributions to the history and literature of the West. In THE FIELDS OF EDEN, Wheeler takes the reader to the Oregon Country of the 1840s, a time when this immense, primitive, breathtakingly beautiful territory is ruled by England's venerable Hudson's Bay Company, a hegemony being challenged by the arrival of emigrants seeking a chance at a new life. The author's unforgettable cast of characters include the O'Malleys, John and Mary Kate, who come from an Irish village and endure the heartbreaking journey to the Pacific with a simple dream of making an honest living and rising above the grinding poverty of their beloved home country; Rev. Jasper Constable, who brings his family to Oregon with lofty motives--to bring God to the natives--and who is as unaccustomed to physical labor as he is to disillusionment; Abel Brownell, married to Felicity and father of two, who has been lucky all his life, making money with no effort and hoping to make a fortune out West with his gift of gab and carefree manner; and Garwood Reese, whose dream is the most ambitious of all: to convince others that he is the savior of Oregon, the man who will eject the British and their French-Canadian cohorts and establish white American supremacy in the Northwest. In his efforts he is aided by his sister-in-law Electra Reese, whose husband drowns in the Columbia River rapids and who, with her own predatory agenda, wastes no time grieving. The one man who both aids and stands in the way of this disparate party of dreamers is the "White Eagle" of the Oregon country, Doctor John McLoughlin, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, a physical and intellectual giant torn by his allegiance to the British Crown he represents and his innate humanity toward the starving, trail-worn emigrants struggling into his domain. Wheeler is no mere "story-teller" -- all his books (among them, SIERRA, AFTERSHOCKS, SECOND LIVES, THE BUFFALO COMMONS, SUN MOUNTAIN, MASTERSON, BADLANDS) elucidate some element of the American character -- often a failing, more often an understated nobility -- and while the reader may not realize it while caught up in this master's stylish narrative, there is a gentle moral in every book. THE FIELDS OF EDEN is grandly-conceived, flawlessly written, and unfailingly moving: hallmarks of the work of this American master.