The Homesman opens in the 1850s, when early pioneers are doing anything they can to survive dreadful conditions. Women especially struggle with broken hearts and minds as they face bitter hardships: One nineteen-year-old mother loses her three children to diphtheria in three days; another woman left alone for two nights is forced to shoot wolves to protect herself.
The situation calls for a “homesman”—a person charged with taking these women, driven mad by the conditions of rural life, to asylums in the East. Not exactly a job people are lining up for, it falls to Mary Bee Cuddy, an ex-teacher and spinster, who is indomitable, resourceful, and “plain as an old tin pail.” Brave as she is, Mary Bee knows she can’t make it alone, so she takes along her only available companion: the lowlife and untrustworthy George Briggs.
Mary Bee and George know it won’t be easy, but their endurance is truly tested as they fight the tide of colonization, Indian attacks, ice storms, loneliness, and the unceasing aggravation of a disparate group of mad women. This is the tale of their journey and a tribute to the men and women who homesteaded the frontier, whether they survived or not.
Winner of both the Spur Award and the Wrangler (Best Western Novel) Award in 1988, The Homesman is fiction of the highest rank. Glendon Swarthout has created a magnificent tale and a portrait of a frontier woman who is as moving and believable as she is unforgettable.
This book was not worth the 7 hours I spent listening to it via audio book. All of it was interesting except for the last 50 or so pages. Suddenly our main character, Mary Bee Cutty is cut out of the story and the plotline refers to the secondary character, Briggs. There is no moral storyline, no greener grass on the other side, no silver lining. What one woman set out to do to help others did nothing because she didn't see it through. You don't see if anyone claimed "crazy" recovers. It was a waste of time and I can't believe they actually made a movie - though I'd love to see Meryl Streep play a clinically insane person for about 5 minutes. Bascially, my whole feeling is that the husbands of that the women who go insane are cowards, Mary Bee Cutty starts out as the heroine but falls short, Briggs may fulfill his end of the bargain but there is no silver lining for that guy either. It's dumb.
2 out of 10
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