Guy Vanderhaeghe

It's the 1920s, and an eccentric Hollywood megalomaniac (Damon Chance) is determined to create an epic "great American film" about the American wild west. To this end, he hires Harry Vincent, a down-on-his-luck scenarist (the guy who writes the cards for silent movies), to interview Shorty McAdoo, a genuine wild west relic, to extract an "authentic" recounting of how Americans tamed the west.

The first thing that hits you is the quality of Vanderhaege's writing. It's lyric and original and show more swollen with authentic period detail - he doesn't just describe the Canadian/US frontier in detail: he challenges his readers to smell it, taste it, touch it, feel it, employing language that's stunning in its lack of anachronism.

The next thing you notice is Chance's objective isn't as straightforward as it first appears. Your first clue (assuming we overlook the fact that the guy's name is, literally, "Chance") is that this eccentric studio boss venerates D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" - a horrific example of self-aggrandizing mythmaking if there ever was one. Over the course of the novel, you come to realize that Chance isn't looking for authenticity - he's looking to galvanize American ruthlessness by propagating the message that America is besieged ("Besieged" being the literal name of the movie he is making) by enemies, especially Europe's revolutionaries and the Jews, who deserve to be destroyed. "The enemy is never human," he tells our scenarist, creating a confounding ethical dilemma for poor Vincent who is coming to realize, through his interactions with McAdoo and a comely Jewish colleague (Rachel) that in the real world - unlike black & white "shorties" he writes for - good and evil are, at best, ambiguous concepts.

This is a provocative novel of ideas cleverly embedded in a ripping yarn that embraces both the birth of Hollywood and the birth of our frontier, conveyed in vivid, affecting prose. Feel free to enjoy this for the terrific action/characters/ambiance, but for those who enjoy digging deeper, this novel offers ample opportunity to "invite argument, invite reconsideration, invite thought" - as Chance notes in one of his epic philosophical streams-of-consciousness. Is America's spiritual identity/native art form "motion," as Chance suggests? Should the goal of history-telling be to preserve the past (as Vincent supposes) or to secure the future (as Chance advocates)? Is empathy for the proletariat a strength (as Vincent believes) or a weakness (as Chance argues)? Is using movies to facilitate cultural assimilation appropriate - or dangerous propagandizing? So much great fodder here for book group discussion! show less

I read Guy Vanderhaeghe's THE ENGLISHMAN'S BOY several years ago and loved it. THE LAST CROSSING (2002) is the second book in his Canadian West trilogy. A big book at nearly 400 pages, I thought, well, this is gonna take a while. But I finished it in just a few days, it was so good! The Canadian frontier in the late 1800s really comes alive here, and so does England, in a framing story of the wealthy Gaunt family, with its cruel demanding father; an older son, Addington, a British Army show more veteran of the "troubles" in Ireland, with some cruel, twisted habits of his own; and twins - Charles and Simon, perhaps as unalike as twins could be. The plot revolves around a search expedition for Simon, who has gone missing in wild and wooly western Canada. Some Canadian characters are key too, as the point of view shifts between several voices. Perhaps the most iinteresting of these is Custis Straw, a widowed combat veteran of the U.S. Civil war who, despite his PTSD, has amassed a small fortune as a horse trader with the Indian tribes. He is much taken with Lucy Stoveall, a woman hell bent on finding the killers of her younger sister. And there is Aloysius Dooley, Straw's friend and the saloon keeper, as well as Jerry Potts, a half-breed guide (based on a real, historical person). Compelling, finely wrought and complex characters, crime, sex, violence, cowboys and Indians stuff - they all make for one humdinger of a yarn, and a highly literate one at that. Vanderhaeghe is simply a wonderful writer. I cannot over emphasize that. My very highest recommendation. (And the third book of the trilogy, A GOOD MAN, is already in my teetering to-read pile.)

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

“I’ve been knocking around this country ten years – it changes a man. But I’m not all the way there yet … I’m betwixt and between – half civilized, half uncivilized. A centaur.” (Ch 19)

Vanderhaeghe tells two stories, past and present, in alternating chapters in The Englishman’s Boy. In the past, the eponymous protagonist finds himself adrift in Fort Benton, Montana when his employer dies unexpectedly. He hooks up with a group of wolfers, hot in pursuit of the Assiniboine show more whom they believe to have stolen several of their horses. The wolfers are harsh, savage men, lusting for a fight with their enemies. The pursuit leads the pack north into Canada to the site of the 1873 Cypress Hills Massacre in Saskatchewan. The Englishman’s boy, himself a tough and hardened case, is not abjectly cruel. He is irreparably changed by his experience. In Vanderhaeghe’s signature plush description, we meet the “boy”:

“Dawe’s boy had the gaunt, cadaverous look of the rural poor, of the runt who has sucked the hint tit, who has been whupped with horse-halters and stove-wood, anything hard and hurting that came to hand. His anthracite eyes did his talking for him. They said: Expect no quarter. Give none. He owned a face white and cold as a well-digger’s ass. He didn’t string more than five words together at a time and no one could place his accent. He was seventeen but looked fifteen, stunted by a diet of bread and lard and strong tea. Everyone took him for a runaway from some hard-scrabble, heartbreak farm. Out West, his kind were thick as ticks on a dog.” (Ch 3)

Fast forward to 1920s Hollywood, and scenarist Harry Vincent is hired by plutocrat Damon Ira Chance of Best Chance Pictures to track down aged cowboy, Shorty McAdoo, the Englishman’s boy. Chance is looking to make the quintessential American Western, based on the “truth.” McAdoo has the reputation of an “Indian fighter,” and Chance wants his story. Writer Vincent has his work cut out for him: McAdoo is reclusive and cantankerous. Haunted by his past at Cypress Hills, he’s not in a mood to relive that history, particularly not to a Hollywood writer claiming to be in search of the “truth.” McAdoo is right, of course: Chance wants his “vision” of the truth, not the facts. So the greed and superficiality of early Hollywood meets the unrest of a bloodbath in the old West.

The Englishman’s Boy is the first of a loose trilogy by Vanderhaeghe, though having read all three novels, each is easily a stand alone read. While I did not enjoy The Englishman’s Boy as much as The Last Crossing and A Good Man, I’ve said before that I find Vanderhaeghe irresistibly readable, and that remains true here. Recommended! show less

I found this book very dense: in description, writing, and events. Vanderhaeghe built a very precise world, slowly pulling us in, introducing us to the characters, unravelling their fears, urges and loves. The story is told in different voices, but it's subtle and incredibly well done. There are some very strong passages that illustrate the difficulties of the time (mid 1800s), from illness to working conditions or social expectations. What I found the most interesting, however, was the show more culture clashes and exchanges between white Americans, Indigenous peoples and the British: all coexisting in various ways with very different view points and privileges.
Vanderhaeghe does a tremendous job of pulling all these items together with exciting minutiae and although it does require close attention, I found it incredibly rewarding. show less