Blue Heaven: A Novel

Willard Wyman

Nov. 2011 · University of Oklahoma Press

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The year is 1902. A young stock-handler named Fenton Pardee has just survived the train wreck that almost destroyed William F. Cody’s Wild West show. Surveying the train’s smoldering ruins—and what is left of Cody’s company of stunt-riders, trick-shooters, and stage actors—Fenton realizes that turning the West into a circus to thrill the world is no longer thrilling for him. Salvaging a saddle horse and three pack mules, he heads back into the West, seeking the reality of the Montana Rockies. Blue Heaven marks the return of Fenton Pardee, veteran guide and packer, who figured so memorably in High Country, Willard Wyman’s highly acclaimed first novel. Now Wyman moves back in time, filling in the story of the legendary packer. As he begins his westward journey, Fenton is not nearly as sure of where he is going as of what he wants to leave. Crossing the National Divide, he follows Indian trails and game trails, learning the lay of the land as he moves into a wilderness that comforts him as it draws him ever deeper into it. Stumbling into the camp of Tommy Yellowtail, a Flathead Indian as determined to remain in these mountains as Fenton is to embrace them, he finally finds his way. Together the two men discover that showing people what they want to preserve has its own way of keeping it alive. The tale of Fenton and Tommy—and of the women they love, one of whom is tragically taken from them—cuts through the romance of the West to offer an earthier reality, even as twentieth-century expansion and a looming world war threaten to take it all away.

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Willard Wyman (1930-2014) was a wrangler, guide, and packer in Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Sierra Nevada High Country for over forty years. He taught literature and was a dean of students at both Stanford University and Colby College. He was also Headmaster of The Thacher School.