A Good Man, by Guy Vanderhaeghe

by Joan Marshall - Tuesday, Jan 03, 2012 at 4:39pm

Wesley Case abandons his wealthy father's expectations and chooses life in the NWMP of 1876, where he befriends Major James Walsh. Later Case takes up ranching in Montana where he spies for Walsh on the American government's obliteration of its remaining Indian tribes. As Sitting Bull and the Sioux drift across the border into Canada, Case observes Walsh's efforts to support them. Case falls in love with the redoubtable widow Ida Tarr but doesn't count on the murderous intentions of Michael Dunne, a roughneck who is also vying for Ida's attention. Vanderhaeghe's rich, compassionate exploration of Sitting Bull's character glitters through multiple strands of hope and desperation as government treachery and personal tragedy set the stage in this fabulous story of the early west.

A Good Man completes a trio of novels with western settings by Vanderhaeghe that includes The Last Crossing and The Englishman's Boy.

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