Far as the Eye Can See

by Robert Bausch

Overview

Bobby Hale is a Union veteran several times over. After the war, he sets his sights on California, but only makes it to Montana. As he stumbles around the West, from the Wyoming Territory to the Black Hills of the Dakotas, he finds meaning in the people he meets-settlers and native people-and the violent history he both participates in and witnesses. Far as the Eye Can See is the story of life in a place where every minute is an engagement in a kind of war of survival, and how two people-a white man and a mixed-race woman-in the midst of such majesty and violence can manage to find a pathway to their own humanity.

Robert Bausch is the distinguished author of a body of work that is lively and varied, but linked by a thoughtfully complicated masculinity and an uncommon empathy. The unique voice of Bobby Hale manages to evoke both Cormac McCarthy and Mark Twain, guiding readers into Indian country and the Plains Wars in a manner both historically true and contemporarily relevant, as thoughts of race and war occupy the national psyche.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620402610
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	11/04/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Robert Bausch is the author of six novels and one collection of short stories. They include Almighty Me (optioned for film and eventually adapted as Bruce Almighty), A Hole in the Earth (a New York Times Notable and Washington Post Favorite Book of the Year), and Out of Season (also a Washington Post Favorite). He was born in Georgia and raised around Washington, D.C. Educated at George Mason University (BA, MA, MFA), he has taught at UVA, American, George Mason, and Johns Hopkins, and most recently at Northern Virgina Community College. In 2005, he won the Fellowship of Southern Writers' Hillsdale Award for Fiction for his body of work. In 2009, he was awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, also for sustained achievement. He lives in Virginia.
Robert Bausch is the author of seven novels and one collection of short stories. They include Almighty Me (optioned for film and eventually adapted as Bruce Almighty), A Hole in the Earth (a New York Times Notable and Washington Post Favourite Book of the Year) and Out of Season (also a Washington Post Favourite). He was born in Georgia and is Professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College. In 2005, he won the Fellowship of Southern Writers' Hillsdale Award for Fiction for his body of work. In 2009, he was awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, also for sustained achievement. He has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Virginia.

www.robertbausch.org

Editorial Reviews

09/01/2014
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

Library Journal

An entertaining old-school western [in] the reluctant-hero tradition of Charles Portis (True Grit).” —The New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice

“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.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“As expansive as the country it traverses, Bausch's majestic odyssey through the Old West finds rich nuance in a history often oversimplified . . . The novel's patient, searching first-person narration is finely balanced, with a voice at once straightforward and lyrical, grand and particular. Bausch's 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.'” —Publishers Weekly

“Bausch's voice is more Mark Twain than Larry McMurtry . . . [He] is perceptive without being preachy, and he grants Hale a wide range of emotions while preserving a recognizable strand of stoic masculinity.” —Booklist

“Bausch captures the immense measure of the American landscape . . . Not to be missed by historical fiction fans.” —Library Journal

“Characters like the enigmatic yet relatable Bobby Hale are a real prize in literature . . . . Far As the Eye Can See is a superb western with bold ideas, but it is also daring in its ability to build fresh concepts while maintaining the tried-and-true dynamic of humanity emerging within individuals through war . . . A gripping and engaging tale.” —Book Reporter

From the Publisher