If this historical novel uses a fairly common storytelling device--a group of mismatched characters embarks on a quest--its quality is decidedly uncommon. In 1870 idealistic English missionary Simon Gaunt disappears in a Montana blizzard. The family patriarch directs brothers Charles, a painter, and Addington, a soldier, to find their sibling, whether alive or dead. Charles misses Simon terribly; Addington looks forward to touring the West. The Gaunts aren't the only ones with different agendas. The search party that departs from Fort Benton eventually includes Lucy Stoveall, a laundress chasing her sister's murderer; Custis Straw, a haunted Civil War veteran in love with Lucy; and Jerry Potts, a half-breed guide torn between worlds. Despite Addington's increasingly erratic command, most of the travelers' desires are fulfilled, albeit in unexpected fashion and not always in due time. Popular Canadian writer Vanderhaeghe (The Englishman's Boy, 1996) moves deftly between present and past, between exterior and interior landscapes, choosing unique and telling details. Especially excellent are first-person passages in which richly individual voices give the story the pulse of life. Underlying themes are fertile: the construction of identity, the lure of wildness, and the scars inflicted by civilization. Should find a wide readership. --Keir Graff Copyright 2003 Booklist

This sweeping epic novel of the search for a lost Englishman in the raw Indian territories of the U.S.-Canadian Western borderlands in the late 19th century was a Canadian bestseller and award-winner last year, but has only just made it here. That's puzzling, for Vanderhaeghe (The Englishman's Boy) is a prodigiously gifted writer who makes the West, its fierce weathers, rugged landscapes and contrary characters come to life in a way comparable to McMurtry at his best. He tells of the disappearance on the prairie of a wealthy and idealistic young Englishman, Simon Gaunt, in the company of a devious missionary who is later found dead. Simon's tyrannical father sends brothers Charles and Addington to see if they can find out what happened to him and if, by chance, he is still alive. The dreamy, artistic Charles and the preening, choleric Addington get together with a Scots-Indian half-breed, Jerry Potts (a real person of the time), as their guide and set out into a wilderness inhabited only by warring Indian tribes and rogue traders selling them whiskey. They are accompanied by Lucy Stoveall, a tough beauty in search of the renegades who raped and murdered her young sister, and Custis Straw, a battered Civil War veteran desperately in love with her. Their adventures are pulse-poundingly exciting and graphic, and if the book has a fault it is that it is almost overstuffed with drama and incident. A pair of brilliant set pieces-Straw's memories of a bloody Civil War battle, and a murderous encounter between warring Indian tribes-are not really essential to the narrative, and the elegiac ending seems oddly off-key. But the book's rewards far transcend these excesses, and no reader once embarked on this hugely involving adventure will be able to stop until it is done. 8-city tour. (Feb.) Forecast: Stressing the book's huge success in Canada and playing up the glowing tributes to Vanderhaeghe from the likes of Richard Ford and Annie Proulx should help alert customers to the arrival here of a major talent far too little known. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved