The Country Beyond by James Oliver Curwood

A romance of the Northern forests, heavy on the sap

James Oliver Curwood is Michigan’s answer to Jack London. Both authors were famous for their wilderness adventures, which frequently take place in the colder regions of the North. Curwood’s novels are often set in the Canadian wilds north of Michigan, while London focused on Canada north of his native California. Both authors were also dog lovers and featured canine protagonists in their fiction. Curwood’s novel The Country Beyond, published in 1922, stars Peter, a pooch who’s half Airedale terrier, half Mackenzie hound. About half the book is narrated in the third person through the eyes of the dog, while the other half is related from the perspective of the human characters.

North of Lake Superior lies an idyllic patch of wilderness called Cragg’s Ridge. Life is not paradise for all who live there, however. There an orphaned 16-year-old girl named Nada lives with her two reluctant guardians who treat her as if she were an indentured servant. Jed Hawkins, her alcoholic foster dad, is particularly abusive and frequently strikes Nada and his wife. He has plans to soon sell Nada to a local laborer, presumably (it’s implied) as a sex slave. Nada has two bright lights in her life. One is her dog Peter. The other is her acquaintance with Jolly Roger McKay, a stranger who recently wandered into the vicinity of Cragg’s Ridge to occupy a neighboring cabin. Young Nada is in love with Jolly Roger, and the feeling seems to be mutual, though as yet unconfirmed. Hawkins injures Peter in a fit of rage, and Nada rushes the dog to Jolly Roger’s cabin. When Roger finds out how Nada’s been treated by Jed Hawkins, he vows to free her from her foster father’s clutches. Jolly Roger would love to make Nada his wife, but he is an outlaw, hiding from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Soon he will once again be on the run from the law, and the hard life of a fugitive is no life for a delicate young lady.

There’s a lot wrong with this book. Jolly Roger’s age is never specified, but he’s clearly a grown man romancing a teenager. He also seems to have the hots for an Indian maiden, but Curwood seems to imply that that’s OK because she’s an Indian and therefore no competition for the white bride. The plot hinges on a fair amount of Native American mysticism that just feels like a lot of unnecessary mumbo-jumbo. There are long stretches of the book where nothing much happens. A lot of words are wasted on Jolly Roger’s (and thus Curwood’s) thoughts on love and womanhood. Nada is depicted as so simple and innocent that she almost seems mentally ill, and her whole purpose in life and in the story is to just be totally submissive to Jolly Roger. There’s never any disagreement between the two lovers that might have made the story more interesting.

Even more annoying is the fact that there’s no good reason for these two lovers to be separated for most of the book other than sheer prudery. If the two went on the lam together, they’d have to sleep in close proximity to one another without a chaperone. God forbid. The whole book feels as if it is constricted by Victorian-era mores. Jack London would have simply disregarded such puritanical conventions, but Curwood’s writing is much more genteel. The reader can tell early on that law and order must prevail in Curwood’s world, which makes the ending a predictable foregone conclusion. A wilderness adventure should have an edge to it, a sense of danger, of which this novel has very little. The scariest scene in the book is the dog’s fight with an owl.

Having read a handful of Curwood’s books, I find his writing hit and miss. I preferred his novels The Alaskan and The Gold Hunters, but neither was great. For another Michiganian writer of wilderness adventures, check out the works of Stewart Edward White. The Blazed Trail is one of his better efforts.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon and leave me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R1UZ5I5S469854/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm