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East of the mountains

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	PS3557.U846 E22 1999	Off-site

Description

279 pages : map; 24 cm

Summary

It is mid-October, 1997, harvest time in the Columbia Basin of central Washington state, a rich apple- and pear-growing region. Ben Givens, recently widowed, is a retired heart surgeon, once admired for his steadiness of hand, his precision, his endurance. He has terminal colon cancer. While Ben does not readily accept defeat, he is determined to avoid suffering rather than engage it.
And so, accompanied by his two hunting dogs, he sets out through the mythic American West - sage deserts, yawning canyons, dusty ranches, vast orchards - on his last hunt.
The main issues for Ben as a doctor had been tactical and so it would be with his death. But he hadn't considered the persuasiveness of memory - the promise he made to his wife Rachel, the love of his life, during World War II. Or life's mystery.
On his journey he meets a young couple who are "forever", a drifter offering left-handed advice that might lessen the pain, a veterinarian with a touch only a heart surgeon would recognize, a rancher bent on destruction, a migrant worker who tests Ben's ability to understand. And just when he thinks there is no turning back, nothing to lose that wasn't lost, his power of intervention is called upon and his very identity tested.

Subjects

Genre/Form

ISBN

0151002290

LCCN

98040512

OCLC

ocm39706973

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries