Ridgerunner by Gil Adamson

Ridgerunner by Gil Adamson
House of Anansi, May 2020

A literary historical novel with the propulsion and atmosphere of a western.

I loved Gil Adamson's Outlander (2007), in which a 19-year-old white woman, Mary Boulton, is on the run from the law across the 1903 Canadian West, so I was delighted to learn that her new novel is a follow-up to Mary's story. In Ridgerunner, it's 1917 and Mary has recently died. Her widowed husband William Moreland and her son Jack Boulton are the main characters. There's also an ensemble of colourful secondary characters, including Sampson Beaver. Formerly a US marshall from Oklahoma, Sampson is now an old man living in seclusion in the mountains, and the nearest neighbour to William and Jack.

        Sampson took off his hat, turned his face up to the moon, and closed his eyes like a man sunbathing. Perhaps, he thought, we are toughest when we are young, and life wears us down; we become increasingly tender with age. 

Jack is indeed tough and capable at twelve, living on his own in the wilderness while his father is on the run, blowing up banks and stealing money so that his son will have choices instead of living in poverty. Everyone seems to struggle with their mental health, including Sister Beatrice, the nun who initially took charge of Jack after his mother died. Her inherited family house is in Banff, but town life didn't suit the boy.

        But a small town is a living engine run on talk, innumerable bees grumbling in their paper cells. Jack heard it everywhere he went. Gossip, opinionation, conjecture, speculation, debate.

Gil Adamson's prose is a pleasure. She evokes time and place beautifully. This is the kind of story where you can really sink into the atmosphere. Most of the story takes place in the Rocky Mountains near Banff and Lake Louise, but Moreland travels far. The following passage is an example of his experience of the prairies:

        But the prairie had puzzled him; the way you could walk for hours and seem not to advance. All around him were roads that ran so long and straight between wintering fields of unknown crops they seemed to vanish over the curve of the earth. He saw a ranching truck in the distance heralded by nothing but a soundless dust plume leaning with the wind. He watched it go, wondering where the driver was headed. Ranches, feed barns, maybe a killing house, where someone was making money on wartime bully beef. To the truck's right, a tiny fist of terrible weather hung over the land, so corralled by the miles it would never make it to where Moreland stood. How beautiful to watch weather work at a distance, without the slightest need to decide what that weather would mean to you. Rain, snow, lightning, it was happening to someone else.

Remote as the setting is, the outside world encroaches. Young men are scarce, having gone off to fight in the war in Europe. Hundreds of civilians deemed "enemy aliens" are imprisoned in internment camps at Castle Mountain and Banff, where Jack sees them being used as forced labour.

Moral ethics, loyalty, the class divide, motherhood, and father-son relationships are some of the issues that provoke thought. Overall, the plot and pacing make this a page-turner. It's intelligent and very readable.

Giller chances: MEDIUM HIGH - As enjoyable and well-written as Ridgerunner is, I don't see a larger truth, something that would lift this into award territory. I guess what I mean is that I didn't feel changed after reading this.

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I'm reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible in order to come up with my own longlist prediction before the official one that will be announced on September 8, 2020. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog.