Centennial - James A. Michener (First UK edition)

Mr. Michener’s new novel is in the great tradition which made Hawaii and The Source into world best-sellers. Its setting is the American North-West and in particular what is now the State of Colorado, whose most startling development – the great cattle ranches of the mid 19th century – came through the initiative of a single Englishman backed by the merchants of Bristol.

Mr. Michener takes us from pre-history to the present day. He gives us, mainly over the last two centuries, a story rich in excitement, incident, human values – the story of Indians, trappers, traders, adventurers, explorers, gold-seekers, cowboys, farmers, speculators, of the winning by the white man of the American West.

The strange story, for example, of the Indian, Lame Beaver, born in 1747 before his tribe had ever seen a white man, who encounters Pasquinel, the French trapper, who marries his daughter to produce half-breeds who will harass the white man moving along the Oregon Trail; the exploits of the Englishman rancher, Oliver Seccombe, already mentioned. Then there are Frank Skimmerhorn, the Indian-hater; Wendell, actor and con-man turned real-estate operator; Garrett, who dares to invade cattle-country with sheep.

These are only some of Mr. Michener’s large cast. Most of them are related to the contemporary Paul Garrett, rancher and ecologist, who dominates the novel’s final section set in the present day, and who, with his Mexican wife, draws together the strands of this wide-ranging, vividly compelling story. In this epic novel Mr. Michener gives us the panoramic vision of the best Western films, the driving narrative of a superb historian and, above all, the spell-binding readability of the master story-teller of our time.