A Far Country
by Daniel Mason
Published by Vintage Books
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Reviewed by C. L. Rossman
This is a far different tale than the author’s first, bestselling book, The Piano Tuner, although it shares some elements like the search through a jungle, and a sense of loss. This book is about the young girl Isabel and her search for her beloved brother, Isias, who has left home to seek his fortune in the big city.
It is also a clear, unyielding look at the lives of subsistence farmer in a hot country, where one year, rains may bring in a bountiful sugar harvest, and the next, a crop-killing drought which starves the people. The country is never named, but it has a vaguely South American air with its description of “the cane,” and the lives of the poor in the country’s interior contrasted with the coastal cities, where the people must go and seek work during dry years. There is even a description of a large port city with a huge cross on the mountains around it. The peasants from the plains are not welcome in the cities; they are seen as job thieves and worse, and must live in separate quarters called the Settlements.
Isabel is devoted to her brother Isias and believes he is capable of great things—until eventually he believes it too. During a particularly severe drought, he goes away to the “the city” to seek his fortune by playing his guitar. Isabel ‘misses him severely.’ Then one day when he has stopped writing or phoning his family (there is one phone in their village, and everyone uses it on the weekends), she sees the chance to go and find him. Her mother agrees that the family must have more money for food, and sends Isabel to help her cousin Manuela raise her new baby–and look for her brother.
This is a novel of simple, lucid prose, yet it brings home how very tenuous the subsistence farmers’ hold is on life, and how dependent they are on Nature. It is also a story of faith—one girl’s faith that she can find her brother and the people’s faith that the rains will come again.
Armchair Interviews says: A moving story with a special glimpse into the lives of people different than us in their way of life, yet in their emotions and family loyalties, very much the same.