Books

'A Good Man'

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

Atlantic Monthly Press, 464 pp., $24.95

Historical fiction is a tricky business. Even as the author owes fidelity to the facts that set the stage for the story, those facts must play the supporting cast to a make-believe plot full of imaginary characters.

Canadian writer Guy Vanderhaeghe has just the right touch. In "A Good Man," his final leg in a trio of novels that bring the 19th-century frontier to life, Vanderhaeghe successfully recreates a world sent reeling after the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

It's hard to say what terrifies the white settlers more about what became better known as Custer's Last Stand: the utter defeat of those they assumed could conquer any Indian, or the savagery of the Sioux, who left no tomahawk unturned as they annihilated Custer's troops. Either way, after late June of 1876, everyone in the Montana territory was on alert.

Into this breach steps our fictional protagonist, the "good man" of the book's title. He is Wesley Case, a 34-year-old Canadian and disgraced military officer who found refuge by joining the North-West Mounted Police and high-tailing it to the prairie.

As the story opens, he declines the commission and future political career his well-placed father is engineering for him back in Ottawa. Instead, he accepts the Canadian commander's request that he serve as a civilian go-between with the American major at Fort Benton in north central Montana.

This arrangement puts Case squarely in the middle of the political and military currents that are wafting across the region, with all the competing interests in play. Each Indian tribe had its own internal tensions and priorities, while the Canadians and Americans temporarily put aside their clashing territorial imperatives to track the Indians and keep them in line.

Another important — and surprising, at least to this Yankee — adversary in the novel turns out to be the Irish freedom fighters known as the Fenians. Some of their members lurk in the shadows of the U.S. Army, as they plot to overthrow England's sovereignty to the north.

Their aim may sound ludicrous in the light of history. But in its time it seemed no less possible than the aspirations of the Sioux chief Sitting Bull, a courageous but ultimately tragic figure who also figures prominently in "A Good Man."

After Case arrives at Fort Benton, his vaunted place in the flow of events puts at risk both his newly established cattle ranch and his newfound love, a tart-tongued widow named Ada Tarr. As in all good westerns, it also leads to the inevitable showdown, this one involving a homicidal ne'er-do-well with ties to the Fenians.

There's no question that "A Good Man" holds its own with the previous prizewinning installments in Vanderhaeghe's trilogy, "The Englishman's Boy" and "The Last Crossing." A trained historian, he is also a superb writer who packs authenticity into every detail.

For instance, when Case asks the hotel clerk for directions to Ada Tarr's house, he's told to look for a white house. "And not whitewashed, mind you, but oil-painted," the clerk says pointedly, supplying readers with not only a sense of Ada's wealth but also one status symbol of an era gone by.

Vanderhaeghe also intersperses the king's English with colorful colloquialisms such as "get your sit-upons in the saddle." Sit-upons? You won't find that in Webster's, but maybe it's a phrase worth bringing back.

The writer is no less attentive to the surroundings, creating a sense of timelessness from the Missouri River's "biscuit-coloured water" and the "canvas-coloured landscape" of the Plains Another nice touch: this monochromatic backdrop for a dazzling yarn about human dreams and tragedies.

Ellen Emry Heltzel is a Portland writer and co-author of "Between the Covers: The Book Babes' Guide to a Woman's Reading Pleasures."