Savage Country: A Novel

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The sweeping landscape and brutal living conditions in Robert Olmstead’s latest novel, Savage Country, complete a stark and treacherous backdrop to the steady and vicious injustices the characters inflict upon one another. Elizabeth Coughlin, recently widowed in 1873 in Kansas, discovers her financial situation, thanks to poor choices made be her late husband, is dire. Her only hope to survive is a dangerous trek into Indian Territory to carry out the buffalo hunt that should have been her husband’s responsibility. In order to do this, she will need help.

Among the ragtag band of men she assembles, including four brothers named for apostles, Elizabeth is accompanied by two wildly different men. The reverend doctor with a passion for writing has designs on building a life with the young widow. He is respectable, well-mannered, and well-heeled, and wants nothing more than to protect her. The other man, a secretive and darkly mysterious big-game hunter, is Michael, the brother-in-law she did not meet until her husband’s death. Both men aid Elizabeth in valuable ways, but only one of them senses who she really is and what she really needs.

As the book unfolds, the journey becomes more and more fraught with peril. In-fighting, unpredictable storms, and disease plague the party as they make their way across the plains. Olmstead’s prose is riveting and spare, and while the details are accurate and compelling, there is no overwriting or flowery description: the style of the novel reflects the haunting and at times hopeless state of the characters. Savage Country is difficult to read in its depiction of the killing of buffalo, but important, too, as Olmstead’s narrative reveals the struggle to survive not only for Elizabeth but for the country during the post-Civil-War era.


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Author Robert Olmstead
Star Count 4/5
Format Hard
Page Count 304 pages
Publisher Algonquin Books
Publish Date 26-Sep-2017
ISBN 9781616204129
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Issue January 2025
Category Historical Fiction
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