A GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO THE FRONTIER

by Joanne Meschery ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1990

Marsh is a recent widower, his wife of many years just dead of a long misery with cancer. In the hospital he came to know another terminal patient, who died about the same time as Marsh's wife; and when Marsh goes to pay a condolence call to the man's father--an old but frisky black man named Reg--the two become entwined in an unlikely change of life. Reg plans to drive his son's motor home, The Establishment, from California to Kansas, in search of his own father's history as one of the first black men to reside in the new territory of the Plains. Marsh agrees to go along--and the adventures thereafter include picking up various misfits and children and a whole pack of senior-citizen travelers whom Reg spellbinds with the oral tale of his father's life with the Indians. In the meantime, Marsh's daughter-in-law, Alex, estranged from Marsh's son, joins the troop as well--with very direct but oft-deferred consolation between Marsh and Alex the result. Meschery (In a High Place, 1981) is an exuberant and wide-hearted writer whose approach to characterization is the more the merrier. Yet the lurching quality of the mix here--black settlers, Indians, death, survivorship, May-December romance--also betrays a book without clear focus, a novel that high-wires by sheer pluck and spirits but has nothing special to connote. As often as not, it's plain confusing as it piles itself on--and whatever small germ about memory and love is here is simply buried under so much zip. Muscular and lively, but a disappointment after Meschery's finer debut.

Pub Date: March 1, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990

Categories: FICTION