cover image The Rest of the Earth

The Rest of the Earth

William Haywood Henderson. Dutton Books, $22.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-525-93981-8

This atmospheric, vague novel traces a young man's wanderings, alone and afoot, in the vast Wyoming wilderness after the Civil War. Walker Avary, the unsavory hero of Henderson's (Native) second novel, is a sly, itinerant thief who follows a false map in pursuit of an unstated goal. As a young man, he was abandoned by his father in San Francisco after the war and is now obsessed with trekking west, seeking a place called the Wind River Valley. With a supply-laden mule and his precious map, taken from an old railroad brochure, Avary wanders the foothills of the northern Rocky Mountains. He makes a home for himself when he finds the Wind River and a valley with a beautiful lake. But Avary, a ""prairie turnip,"" is hardly a frontiersman, and it's fortunate that he meets a young Indian girl, a ""sheepeater,"" who teaches him how to survive before she runs off, feeling that he can't protect her. Avary builds a sturdy house by the lake and befriends the local rancher, who turns on him by filing claims for ownership of Avary's land. This disjointed tale lacks spark and surprise, overwhelmed as it is with Avary's murky dreams and visions. Some of the lengthy descriptions of Wyoming's geography are truly stunning, but they don't sustain the story. Too much is left unexplained, too many events occur without apparent connection and characters drift in and out of scenes like fog. Avary's false map is an all too apt metaphor for the entire novel, which lures the reader along with the promise of a nonexistent reward. (Aug.)