Dear Reader,

Karen Fisher’s A Sudden Country,is not a great novel. It’s Greater-than-Great. Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle and named one of the year’s Books to Remember by the New York Public Library, this debut novel is set during the Oregon migration of 1847 and follows the life of Hudson Bay Company trader James MacLaren. This man’s sanity is nearly destroyed when his Nez Percé wife deserts him and his two young daughters die of smallpox (make sure there are no flies in your room when you read this first chapter—your mouth will be open the whole time trying to catch your breath). Now a broken man filled with sorrow and a certain sense of vengeance, he sets off in search of his wife. On his journey, he will meet Lucy Mitchell, a lonely, remarried widow and mother, who believes that the brooding James is the key to her family’s safe passage along the rugged and dangerous Oregon Trail.

As the lives of these two lost people collide, secrets will be revealed, and obsessions will change the course of their lives forever. Beautifully written, poetic without being sentimental, this is one of my favorite books from over the last two years.

Gary Jansen
Executive Editor, QPB