Summary and Reviews of The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe

Media Reviews

Booklist - Keir Graff Starred Review. 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.

London Free Press A tour de force. Wonderfully written, suspenseful and totally absorbing, this novel must be [Vanderhaeghe's] most powerful to date…A page turner not only of epic proportions but of literary merit.

National Post The Last Crossing is an absolutely wonderful book, the kind of literature that convinces readers the world is a vast and mythic enterprise, larger than our individual crises or triumphs…A joy to read.

Toronto Globe and Mail - Annie Prouxl Rarely are today's hungry readers invited to such a feast of a book…There are few writers who can encapsulate a character in a single sentence, turn a phrase or manipulate a metaphor as brilliantly as Vanderhaeghe…One of North America's best writers.

Entertainment Weekly - Jennifer Reese Big, satisfying . . . juicy, tough, gruesome. . . . It's been years since I picked up a fat, lurid bodice ripper, and I embarked on The Last Crossing—full of period costumes and mannered, flowery prose—buoyed by waves of nostalgia. . . . The journey itself turns out to be something new and scary, unfolding more like a gothic horror story than a classic horse opera. . . . This isn't escapist literature of an adolescent's dream, but something decidedly more bracing and grown-up.

The New York Times Book Review - John Vernon [Vanderhaeghe is] a Dickensian sensationalist. His flair for the lurid can be exquisite. . . . Epic novels can be loose, baggy monsters, but this one is stuffed with enough goodies to keep us entertained for days.

The New Yorker The prose can be overripe, particularly in the opening chapters, and moments of historical exposition are clumsily inserted. However, the sweep of the narrative gradually overcomes these missteps, and as the various searches for revenge or redemption get under way the writing achieves unforced grace and power.

Books in Canada The Last Crossing is truly Vanderhaeghe's masterpiece.

Calgary Herald A tremendous achievement of imagination, capturing the West in all its grandeur. With its intricate layer of stories, constant surprises, unforgettable scenes and characters and dramatic landscape, Vanderhaeghe's saga is certain to resonate with readers long after they've finished the book.

Edmonton Journal The Last Crossing is an enormously rich and complex work, spanning time and place. It is an amazingly good story, and it both creates and satisfies a profound emotional need in readers. Thank you, Guy Vanderhaeghe.

Montreal Gazette There's no putting the book down…Masterful.

Ottawa Citizen The Last Crossing is a tale of lust, murder, revenge, shock and survival. But this is no pulp fiction. It is an arresting work of art more in the vein of Leo Tolstoy or Charles Dickens…Each characters is crafted with the care and precision of a Michelangelo sculpture. The plot grabs you in such a fierce, determined way that it is impossible, once started, to set the book aside.

Toronto Globe and Mail - Martin Levin Vanderhaeghe's is an epic novel, but without the sometimes baggy sprawl the use of that word can connote; he maintains almost pitch-perfect control over five distinct narrative voices. If ‘excellence' means anything, this novel is excellent.

Kirkus Reviews Sumptuously imagined and fashioned with a master craftsman's attentiveness and finesse. Brilliant work.

Publishers Weekly ...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. *A reference to a couple of scenes that the reviewer considered non-essential and overplayed.

Fact and Fiction Bookstore - Barbara Theroux My long wait is over!! The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe is storytelling at its best. The American frontier comes to life, as does the Civil War and any other event that affects the lives of Charles and Addington Gaunt. When these two brothers are ordered to find their missing brother, an unlikely search party is formed to cover the vast ‘medicine line' frontier of Montana and Canada. McMurtry's Lonesome Dove can no longer be considered the true frontier novel!