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Title	:	Heart of the Country
Author	:	Greg Matthews
Book Format	:	Hardcover
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 317 pages
Published	:	February 11th 1987 by W. W. Norton & Company (first published April 17th 1986)
Categories	:	Historical. Historical Fiction. Westerns. Fiction

Heart of the Country

Greg Matthews

Hardcover | Pages: 317 pages

Rating: 4.01 | 387 Users | 41 Reviews

Commentary Conducive To Books Heart of the Country

On the washstand by his bed lay a small shaving mirror. Joe picked it up and examined his face. I'm only fifteen, he told himself. I've got years and years of life ahead of me. He wondered how it was possible to endure life until old age and death. What kept people sane for so long? How did others manage it? The answer, of course, was simple: other people were not hunchbacks.

In the mid-1800s, a prominent St. Louis doctor brings home a half-breed infant who was left in a churchyard, and his life begins a "descending spiral." The doctor's wife refuses to have anything to do with the child, and a permanent wedge is driven between the couple. As the boy, Joseph, grows, his malformation becomes evident, yet he resists all of the doctor's efforts to correct the situation. Joe does not do well at school, but has educated himself by reading every book in the doctor's library.

The boy was a freak; worse, he appeared to take pride in his freakishness. The long hair had been clumsily braided, the blanket now a permanent fixture across hump and shoulders. The doctor ground his teeth weakly, kept his voice at a reasonable level. 'What manner of creature do you take yourself for?'
'A hunchback Indian,' said Joseph, equally determined not to provoke a disturbance between them.
'You did not continue with your exercises.'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'They did no good.'
'You should have persevered.'
'A maple can't be an oak, no matter how hard it tries.'
'Most poetic, Joseph, and utterly nonsensical. You are not a tree.'
'No, I'm a hunchback Indian.'
'Is your impertinence deliberate?'
'I'm not being impertinent, Father. Possibly facetious.'
The doctor regarded Joseph with alarm; the child was not only deformed, but precocious. 'I take it your education has proceeded along satisfactory lines.'
'Yes. I stopped going to school.'
'Explain yourself.'
'I stabbed a teacher on the first day and didn't go back. They kept the fee.'

(That may just be my favorite literary conversation - EVER!)

Eventually the doctor proclaims, 'My boy, if you are not hanged in the meantime, you may someday be a remarkable man.'

Joseph heads west at age fifteen. His goal is to become a buffalo hunter. After a brief stint as a whorehouse bouncer, he finds himself looking down a rifle barrel at an ungainly creature with a hump on its back - the American Buffalo.

The accounts of buffalo slaughter are horrifying and astounding. Unfathomable numbers were shot simply for sport, or their skins alone.

The old Americans saw their herds, sacred gift of the Great Spirit who brought them into the world of men from a hole in the earth, dwindle in the space of twenty moons from abundance to paucity. A man could walk from sunrise to sundown on the naked, rotting bodies of buffalo without once setting foot on the ground.

Joseph becomes known for his hunting prowess, and earns the name Joe Buffalo. He also comes under the scrutiny of twitchy, weaselly Calvin Puckett, a mentally unhinged man who believes God has commanded him to "kill the crooked man."

Somehow, Joe stands strong, if not tall, and even manages to assemble a strange family of his own.

The book is crammed with fascinating, unforgettable characters - the furnace attendant at the whorehouse who longs to open a school for black children, an elderly woman who fakes an injury to torment her daughter-in-law, a mute girl who believes she bleeds for Jesus... I don't remember the last time I was so completely drawn into a book.

He was what he had wanted to be, a hunter of buffalo, a man (for remarkably few ever guessed his true age) with a reputation. That reputations west of the Missouri were generally purchased with the aid of gunpowder and lead and gaping flesh, either animal or human, was not a fact that Joe allowed to fill him with misgiving. The newly opened territories were a man's world, and contained within their westering boundaries a stage so vast, so impervious to normal emotion as to demand of its actors a minimum of dialogue and a preponderance of action, the most exalted (and opposing) forms of which are creation and destruction.

This is indeed a book about creation and destruction. And the story of a remarkable man.

Mention Books Supposing Heart of the Country

Original Title:	Heart of the Country
ISBN:	0393022897 (ISBN13: 9780393022896)
Edition Language:	English

Rating Containing Books Heart of the Country

Ratings: 4.01 From 387 Users | 41 Reviews

Discuss Containing Books Heart of the Country

A very depressing tale about the life of Joe Cobden, a half breed Indian hunchback born in the mid 1800's. He just can't seem to catch a break and when he finally does it seems short-lived or ends very badly. If the point of writing this book was to illustrate how bad "half breeds" and disabled people were treated during this period then I guess it was successful. The writing style was very slow going; very descriptive.

A melancholy book focusing on tragic loss and missed opportunities. This book is not for the faint of heart. It's not a book of "happily ever afters" but is masterfully written and really drives at the heart of human nature with stories of avarice, jealousy, and hubris. This is a book very much written in the classical style of a well done tragedy.The main story is about Joe Cobden, half-Native American, hunchback who is spurned by society despite his incredible intellect and need for empathy

This was an interesting book that I enjoyed reading. Unlike many historical-fiction books this book wasn't quite as believable, as written. Despite that, it is well written and, in pieces, is very believable.

Awesome, a good read that may just require a 2nd reading.

It's been a long time sonce I read this, but it was one of the strangest books I ever read. Didnt seem to really go anywhere with the story.

Stay the courseEarly on, I almost gave up on this book. Characters are introduced at random, plot lines wander off aimlessly (it seems) and the whole enterprise feels like some vanity project for a professor of English Lit. But, Mr. Mathews is a crafty soul; his characters worm their way into your sympathies and the plot lines begin intersecting. A very good, involving story about deeply flawed humans. Neither an easy nor comfortable read, this is most decidedly a rewarding read.

Waiting impatiently for this wonderful, amazing, sorrowful, fateful book to be on kindle. Loved it when I read it years ago. Not a light-hearted read or for those who expect a fairy tale. Greg Matthews writes as clean as Larry McMurtry with the nostalgia of Robert McCammon. This book is possibly the most underrated book EVER.