An Eddy of Fine Writing

If you are looking for a tamer, Cold Mountain or The Revenant, this is your book. Originally published in 1911, it is set prior in Canada’s wild and rugged Northwest. What you have is a fairly inventive love story. New York newspaperman, Garth, is on leave chasing a lead when he has a charming encounter with Natalie.

The author’s dialogue and character descriptions are fantastic. Given I had no expectations of the book, this was quite the surprise. The storytelling starts in a very contemporary way, kicking off with a sweet and comedic encounter. At a shared table, in a very rustic restaurant, Mrs. Pink assumes the young couple she dines with is...a couple. It is a lively start.

From there, we get engaging back stories explaining their convergence. Further, it is plausible and inevitable they throw in together on a boating, horse riding and hiking odyssey. Along the way, they meet colourful, rough and hearty characters and adventures aplenty. This could be a streaming tv series, a dramedy tilting towards drama.

Four illustrations, similar to Conan Doyle's inclusions in Holmes' mysteries, are seeded throughout. But what delighted most was the writing:

• “Occasionally they passed a log cabin, gayly whitewashed, and with its sod roof sprouting greenly. These dwellings, though crude, satisfied the great aim or architecture; they were a part of the landscape itself.”
• "He was blowing the fire at the time; a typical tenderfoot's fire, all tinder and no fuel."
• One character’s telling of cannibalism is total Stephen King and deserving of its own book. Not graphic, like today’s writing, simply chilling
• A description of organized Buffalo hunts leaves the impression that the mass slaughter of these beasts was highly coordinated in North America. Big business techniques were employed
• One character was nearly mowed down by an angry bison, he compares its large head and horns to a “locomotive cow-catcher”

A sense of humour is in evidence when one trail meal is described as such, "Bacon aux tomates a la Bland and bannock Musquasepi avec ashes!"

There are interesting phrases like, “Good laws!” and “porridge-mouthed Easterners”. Along with rich phrases, “I ain’t had early advantages. I never learned to dress spruce; and talk good grammar. But a man may have good metal in him for all that.” And, “I’ve lived all my days in a Canadian city back east, too big a place to be simple; and too small to be finished.”

Hulbert Footner (April 2, 1879 – November 17, 1944) was a Canadian born American writer of primarily detective fiction. He also wrote some non-fiction travelogues and it shows. This was his first book; the man went on to write over 60 more. His fortunes and health were severely effected by the Depression. Heart attacks and tight times came in waves.

A few passages from Two on the Trail are among the best I have read in some time. Consider these and you will want to consume the whole book.

“Miwasa was the jumping-off place of civilization; here, at Trudeau’s, is the last billiard table, and the last piano, here, the wayfarer sleeps for the last time on springs, and eats his last “square” before the wilderness swallows him. It is at once the rendezvous, the place of good-byes, and the gossip-exchange of the north; here, the incomer first comprehends the intimate, village spirit of that vast land, where a man’s doing is registered with more particularity than in the smallest hamlet outside. For where there are not, in half a million square miles, enough white men to fill a room, or as many white women as a man has fingers, each individual fills a large space in the picture.”

I will leave off with this most brilliant bit describing those who patronize Trudeau’s, it is “the eddy that sooner or later sucks in the derelicts of the country, sons or brothers of somebody, incredibly unshaven and down at heel; capitalists of bluster and labourers of the tongue.” That is tremendous writing.