RAPAHO

by Jamie Lee Cooper ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 31, 1967

They is such a thing as a man goin' beyond his time."" Portrait of disillusionment and inevitable disintegration. Story of a Promised Land never found and a man broken into separate fragments by a shattering childhood experience. He is now two aging men, Rapaho, the hunter, on his last buffalo hunt who can find nothing but bones...bones at five cents a ton and a spindly buffalo calf that he adopts, cherishes and eventually loses to the elements. And he is Hutch, a dirt farmer with equally misplaced dreams whose only ambition now is to buy a bed...a bed he isn't sure he's fit to sleep on. Rapaho's memories are of his days with the Cherokees and fine times, good hunts, gone now forever. Hutch is haunted by his boyhood self when he had been the lonely preacher's son spending his days with guilt because of the unknown sins his father had railed against. He also remembers the one thing he loved, a golden haired little sister who disappeared one day in an Indian raid. Rapaho found and buried the body. The two personalities, split, but allied are effective and Miss Cooper writes with enough western lyricism to satisfy any nostalgic reader. But it smacks as a conjurer's trick distracting from the real story of pioneers following a pillar of fire Only to find alkali dust.

Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1967

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1967

Categories: FICTION