The High Divide

In this masterfully told Western reinvention of Homer’s Odyssey from Enger (Undiscovered Country), the year is 1886 when Ulysses Pope disappears from the family farm on Minnesota’s northern plains, leaving his wife, Gretta, and their sons, Eli and Danny, to fend for themselves. Eli and Danny hop a train west, following a meager trail of clues in search of their missing father. Gretta remains at home a while longer before going to see her sister-in-law in St. Louis in her own quest for answers. Gretta and her sons slowly uncover Ulysses’s dark secrets from his time in the Seventh Cavalry under Custer. The brothers head further west, through the Badlands and into the Montana Territory, eventually meeting up with William T. Hornaday, who has mounted an expedition to kill one of the last buffalo and put it on display at the Smithsonian. Eli joins Hornaday’s expedition, bringing him closer to a confrontation with his father and to learning about Ulysses’s troubled past. Set against a backdrop of beauty and danger, this is the moving story of a man coming to terms with his past. In its narrative simplicity and emotional directness, it is reminiscent of John Ford’s classic The Searchers. Agent: P.J. Mark, Janklow & Nesbit. (Sept.)