By Sorrow's River

August 25, 2003
In this third volume of McMurtry's Berrybender Narratives, Lord Berrybender and his obnoxious, sniveling brood are, surprisingly, still alive on the dangerous Great Plains of Wyoming and Colorado. The wry story of mountainman adventure and European stupidity, set in the 1830s, is just as wacky and gruesome as its predecessors, Sin Killer and The Wandering Hill. Lord Berrybender is a pompous, lecherous, drunken, one-legged English aristocrat on a hunting expedition in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Surrounded by his four willful and opinionated daughters, inept servants and a haughty mistress, he is protected by an accompanying group of unwashed mountainmen and trappers. His eldest daughter, the vulgar and loudmouthed Tasmin, is married to Indian fighter Jim Snow, aka Sin Killer, and their marital relations are anything but blissful. In this installment, the hunting party slowly travels from its winter camp in the north, southward toward Santa Fe, on a journey filled with seduction, infidelity, short tempers, heat, thirst, Indian attacks and ever more lusty copulation. The sudden and unlikely arrival of two European journalists in a hot air balloon brings more tragic comedy to the prairie soap opera; other irritants include a smallpox epidemic, a mysterious Indian who cuts off the ears of sleeping white men and a murderously insane Mexican army captain. McMurtry's Europeans are all idiots, while the Indians and mountainmen, including Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick and Hugh Glass, are portrayed as honorable men. The Berrybender clan is so annoying one wishes they would all be massacred by the Indians, but enough of them survive to ensure there will be plenty of Berrybenders to kill off in the next installment. One can only hope. Agent, Andrew Wylie.

July 1, 2003
As the Berrybenders make their way toward Santa Fe, Tasmin's husband (the "Sin Killer") conveniently scouts ahead, giving her the opportunity to fall in love with Pomp Charbonneau-who's promptly done in by the Spanish.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2003
A party of Ute warriors placidly negotiates the price of trade goods with a group of mountain men whose encampment they had murderously raided the previous day. A pair of slightly absurd European travelers manages to escape menacing Sioux by inflating a hot-air balloon and flying over their stupefied foes. This is the third installment of the projected four-volume Berrybender saga, which tracks a British family and a motley assortment of comrades as they traipse across the trans-Mississippi West in the 1830s. As in the earlier novels, the focus of the narrative is Tasmin Berrybender and her strange (even to her) attachment to her husband, the rather primitive frontiersman Jim Snow. As the Berrybenders move from South Pass toward Santa Fe, McMurtry relates numerous, seriocomic incidents like those above, revealing the West as a place where irony, vanity, and tragedy are inevitably intertwined. Tasmin and Jim are certainly wonderful literary creations; equally interesting and memorable are McMurtry's finely drawn portrayals of actual historical characters, including Kit Carson, Jim Bridges, Charles Bent, and Pomp Charbonneau. Each plays his part in an exciting, humorous, but often heartbreaking story that unfolds across magnificent, dangerous, and often deadly landscapes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)

February 2, 2004
Audio reviews reflect PW
's assessment of the audio adaptation of a book and should be quoted only in reference to the audio version.
Fiction
BY SORROW'S RIVER
Larry McMurtry
, read by Alfred Molina. Simon & Schuster Audio
, unabridged, eight cassettes, 11.5 hrs., $39.95 ISBN 0-7435-2788-7

Molina keeps the bar raised high with his latest performance of McMurtry's third Berrybender Narrative. As with his readings of the previous two volumes, Sin Killer
and The Wandering Hill
, Molina creates richly nuanced voices for the many characters in this Wild West tale, from the energetic and innocent young guide Kit Carson to the comically selfish old Lord Berrybender, whose pursuit of drink, fornication and wildlife to shoot is what has brought his aristocratic, idiosyncratic and self-centered British clan to the wild and unforgiving Great Plains. This installment revolves around Berrybender's eldest daughter, Tasmin. Having married and mothered a child with the stoic and sometimes brutal frontiersman Jim Snow, also known as the Sin Killer, Tasmin's heart is now drawn to their quiet and emotionally distant guide, Pomp Charbonneau. Though the story seems to lose some of its steam as it explores the nuances of Tasmin's torn-between-two-lovers quandary, Molina's pace never slows. Even when he is not breathing life into a character, his role as narrator is played with such earnest urgency that it keeps the momentum high and the listener wanting more. Simultaneous release with the S&S hardcover (Forecasts, Aug. 25, 2003).

November 1, 2003
The third entry in McMurtry's series (after Sin Killer and The Wandering Hill) continues the saga of the eccentric Berrybenders and other odd characters roaming the American West in the 1830s. In this installment, the protagonists leave the Great Rendezvous of the Mountain Men on the Platte River (in Wyoming and Colorado) and strike out for Santa Fe. Central to this story is the love affair of Tasmin Berrybender (she married frontiersman James Snow in Sin Killer and has already birthed his child) and Pomp Charbonneau, son of Sacajawea. The wilderness continues to kill various party members (chiefly because of their own folly), and McMurtry's deft portraits of both fictional and historical characters keep the book entertaining-this reviewer especially liked the young Kit Carson-but nothing really happens. Basically, the plot is ODTAA (one damned thing after another), and McMurtry's rather detached narration never quite garners enough empathy for any one character. Of course, McMurtry has a large audience, so the book is sure to be in demand, even though it isn't his best. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/03.]-Ken St. Andre, Phoenix P.L.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.