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I remember when I first read Hebert's novel The Dogs of March, which I've argued should be assigned to newly arrived New Englanders as required reading, like taking Vermont's Freeman's Oath. Myself, I read every paragraph twice as I made my way through the pages, the only time I ever recall doing that. Hebert has an incomparable ear for dialogue, an ability to set off a dramatic incident like a blasting cap, and his prose conveys the gnarled, bruising beauty of the north country. Darby, the town he invented as setting for his characters' collisions with fate and one another, is a place now present in detail in my mental cosmos.
Having achieved so much in a certain mode, Hebert evidently felt constrained by the conventions of the contemporary "realistic" novel. In the early 1990s he wrote a cyber-punk thriller called Mad Boys, worked on a nonfiction book about wood, then commenced work on a project seemingly very different.
As he explains in a note at the end of The Old American, he had been pondering childhood memories of a monument in Keene, New Hampshire. Almost hidden behind a hedge, a plaque commemorates the site where in 1736 a settler named Nathan Blake built the town's first log cabin, indicating that Blake was captured by Indians and taken to Canada for three years then ransomed by his wife.
So why do certain books compel readers to pass them on? First, there's the power of a fabulous story. The Old American has that, in spades: the tale of Nathan Blake's captivity unfolds with gravity and old-fashioned excitement. This is the New England frontier, sparsely populated, opulent in game, and with cloud-crowned forests and wild, spume-torn rivers. Nathan survives a series of tests among his captors, including traversing the infamous gauntlet in a rather original way (this episode is a tour de force of narrative strength and agility). Ultimately, although by definition still a slave, Nathan makes a home for himself in the village of Conissadawaga, a town of refugiés from tribes decimated by assimilation, war, and disease. Pulled between contesting strategies for survival ' settlement with European-style cabins and farms, or continuing the nomadic, foraging life further north ' the community is coming apart along age-old rifts. Saturated with historical insights and accuracies, Hebert's writing nonetheless vaults above its scholarly sources and succeeds as a vivid, vigorous story. In scenes of hunting and fishing, planting corn, gossiping by the fire, and gambling (paradoxically, to gain prestige by losing everything), the ancient dwellers on this land come alive. Especially moving and frequently comical is Hebert's way of conveying the linguistic mix surrounding Nathan, a simmering stew of Iroquian and Algonquian languages, French, English, Dutch, and even "slaughtered" church Latin.
Secondly, The Old American has magnificent characters. Although he initially tried to tell his tale from the viewpoint of Nathan Blake, according to Hebert after several failed drafts he re-routed and built the novel around the thoughts and narration of the elderly Indian named Caucus-Meteor, former slave himself and skilled as a multi-lingual translator. He is a combination of philosopher king and court jester, grand in intellect but self-effacing and mischievous. While Hebert's story is endlessly engaging, what lifts this novel to the level of greatness is the character of Caucus-Meteor. Hebert's bold choice, defying imaginative difficulties as well as literary-political correctness, is a mark of his stature as one of our most gifted novelists.
The Old American evokes an epoch far from our own, a time exhilarating in potential yet verging on catastrophe. Those of you who have read the book have surely noticed the enthusiasm and even urgency with which you commend it to others.


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Hebert perfectly conveys the small-town rivalries, petty grievances, and endearing foibles that afflict the fictional town of Darby, New Hampshire, where two of his previous novels were set. The source of the town's current problems is a proposed shopping mall that (to some) promises new jobs and revenue and (to others) threatens the area's rustic way of life. The novel's characters are motivated by greed, principles, politics, and pretensions--and some of them just don't care. All in all, Darby is a microcosm of American life.
At the center of it all is Chance, a journalist covering the story while seeking the identity of his real father and pursuing Soapy, a young girl whose parentage is equally unclear. But the most memorable character is perhaps Ike Jordan, a churlish fraud and petty criminal from the wrong side of the tracks who has pretensions of becoming one of the town's leaders.
It's a shame this book is out of print. I can only hope that the University Press of New England, which has reprinted Hebert's first two Darby novels, will see its way to adding this book to its list.


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