THE SHOOTING OF DAN McGREW

A companion to the Canadian illustrator's acclaimed edition of The Cremation of Sam McGee (1987). As Donald Hall pointed out in his afterword to Thayer's Casey at the Bat (p. 1409/C-237), Service's poems were ""a late recitable anomaly""--a splendid throwback to the 19th-century story poems that lent themselves so well to sharing aloud. This one is full of drama, mystery, and the lure of the forbidding gold country of the Far North. Harrison's sure, broad lines recall Toulouse-Lautrec; his brilliant, rich colors, haunted by the deep blues of night and the paler hues of snow, wonderfully evoke the bright saloon amid the frozen landscape; his deftly drawn faces are as expressive as the verse. A compelling presentation that makes the poem itself even more intriguing.