Described as one of the ten most important novels in all of The New York Times, DARK BRIDWELL describes the brutal life of a pioneer family in the early days of settling the Idaho wilderness.

Tailored after the actual "Crow Killer" John Johnson, Sam Minard is a mountain man who seeks the freedom that the Rocky Mountains offers trappers. After his beloved Indian wife is murdered, Sam Minard becomes obsessed with vengeance, and his fortunes become intertwined with those of Kate Bowden, a widow who faces madness. This remarkable frontier fiction captures that brief season when the romantic myth of the far West became a fact.

Raised by devout Mormon parents, Vardis Fisher drifted from the faith after college. Yet throughout his long career, his writing consistently reflected Mormon thought. Beginning in the early 1930s, the public turned to Fisher's novels like Children of God to understand the increasingly visible Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His striking works vaulted him into the same literary tier as William Faulkner while his commercial success opened the New York publishing world to many of the founding figures in the Mormon literary canon. Michael Austin looks at Fisher as the first prominent American author to write sympathetically about the Church and examines his work against the backdrop of Mormon intellectual history. Engrossing and enlightening, Vardis Fisher illuminates the acclaimed author's impact on Mormon culture, American letters, and the literary tradition of the American West.

Tailored after the actual Crow Killer John Johnson, Sam Minard is a mountain man who seeks the freedom that the Rocky Mountains offers trappers. After his beloved Indian wife is murdered, Sam Minard becomes obsessed with vengeance, and his fortunes become intertwined with those of Kate Bowden, a widow who faces madness. This remarkable frontier fiction captures that brief season when the romantic myth of the far West became a fact.

KNOWING ONLY NAKED LUST AND FEAR, THEY LIVED BY THEIR DARK AND BRUTAL PASSIONS... This critically acclaimed novel, which was first published in 1943, forms part of author Vardis Fisher’s Testament of Man, the moving and unforgettable chronicle of mankind’s long journey from cave to civilization. WERE THEY MEN...OR ANIMALS? They lived in family groups, as men do. Yet the female was always taken by force, as animals do. They walked upright, as men do. Yet they fought with their teeth and nails, ripping at each other’s flesh, as animals do. These strange and violent people belong to the bloodstained and bestial past of every one of us. These are the first men and women—more of a jungle animal than a human being...and ancestors to all of us. ‘The most ambitious project of the imagination in present-day fiction’—The New York Herald Tribune ‘One of the most brutal and disturbing novels ever written’—The Chicago Daily News ‘It is moving art...worthy of a Dostoievsky.’—William K. Gregory, The New York Times ‘An absorbing narrative...It has style, compression, clarity and a beauty of language...’—Thomas Sugrue, Saturday Review ‘A rare find...you’ll treasure it as a vision of pure delight.’—Arnold Gingrich, The Chicago Sun

Chronicle of a family on a dry farm in the Idaho hills.

Designed as a companion to The Columbia Literary History of the United States, this compilation of 31 major essays covers the American novel from the 1700s to the present, although the majority deal with the 20th century. Within each era, themes, genres, and topics such as realism, gender, romance, and technology are discussed in depth, as well as modern Canadian, Caribbean, and Latin American fiction. Each essayist selects only the authors who best illustrate the topic, thus subtly skewing the view of the literary scene at that time. The volume also covers women, minorities, popular fiction, and the book marketplace. ISBN 0-231-07360-7: $59.95.