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Originally published in 1907, The Shepherd of the Hills is Harold Bell Wright's most famous work. In The Shepherd of the Hills, Wright spins a tale of universal truths across the years to the modern-day reader. His Eden in the Ozarks has a bountiful share of life's enchantments, but is not without its serpents. While Wright rejoices in the triumphs, grace, and dignity of his characters, he has not naively created a pastoral fantasyland where the pure at heart are spared life's struggles and pains. Refusing to yield to the oft-indulged temptation of painting for the reader the simple life of country innocents, Wright forthrightly shows the passions and the life-and-death struggles that go on even in the fairest of environments that man invades. The shepherd, an elderly, mysterious, learned man, escapes the buzzing restlessness of the city to live in the backwoods neighborhood of Mutton Hollow in the Ozark hills. There he encounters Jim Lane, Grant Matthews, Sammy, Young Matt, and other residents of the village, and gradually learns to find a peace about the losses he has borne and has yet to bear. Through the shepherd and those around him, Wright assembles here a gentle and utterly masterful commentary on strength and weakness, failure and success, tranquility and turmoil, and punishment and absolution. This tale of life in the Ozarks continues to draw thousands of devotees to outdoor performances in Branson, Missouri, where visitors can also see the cabin where the real Old Matt and Aunt Mollie lived.… (more)
User reviews
There is Sammy, a beautiful, strong mountain girl who Young Matt, son of Mr. Matthews, dreams of marrying one day. Wash Gibbs, leader of an outlaw gang, also has his sights set on Sammy. While meanwhile Ollie, a city slicker, wants to take Sammy away from the “common” life of Mutton Hollow. Ollie thinks Sammy will make a refined lady to compliment him, and covets the idea of having her as his own. Sammy asks Dad to mentor her and teach her to be a proper lady, thinking she isn't worthy of Ollie. Soon she realizes that fine dresses and sophisticated ways mean nothing without mild manners and a humble spirit. Sammy already is a “lady” and living in the city would only leave her homesick for the mountains.
Sammy finds Young Matt is a strong, courageous man and sees Ollie's true colors when Wash Gibbs tries to take advantage of her. Dad Howitt finds a grandson he never knew about and is able to reunite with his long lost son …. These highlights are discovered through astonishing, honest, and believable details that make this story unforgettable!
Harold Bell Wright has a knack for connecting his characters by exposing their motives in ways that allow the reader to predict reactions, but at the same time elicits surprise at what happens next. Even while I was on the right track … figuring out the plot, I was amazed by the way pieces of the story came together. The descriptions of nature .. sunsets, smell of honeysuckle, sound of the wind, lightening and fury of storms made the scenery so visible it was like I was right there.
~ Spoiler ~ The quick summary given here does not do justice to this wonderful story. It is one which I'm sure I'll read again. Love and loss, tragedy and triumph … The Shepherd of the Hills made me realize that everything can be alright when it seems like nothing is.
This is a moving and powerful story, and the occasional lapses into Ayn Randian concepts of physical beauty signifying inner quality can perhaps be overlooked in light of the book's publication date, 1907. More distracting is the author's occasional tendency to portray momentous events and decisions, but then to gloss over the immediate aftermath, jumping ahead to a time when the event has been absorbed and moved on from. This happens a few times, and is a bit disconcerting. But on the whole this is a beautifully told story, with characters of plain and rough integrity whose fates become important to the reader. This was a John Wayne movie in 1941, which I have yet to see and am now mighty curious about.
Every time my friends and I discussed lit, our mentor would chime in with his favorite author: Harold Bell Wright. None of us had heard of him. Wright was an author of a different time who'd largely been left behind. Our mentor swore by the brilliance and majesty ofThe Shepherd of the Hills. One by one, my friends read it and brought their opinions of the book back, and before long entire nights were spent discussing The Shepherd of the Hills. I planned on reading it back then, but life took me slightly on the outside of the group and I hadn't returned to the idea in the two decades since.
The Shepherd of the Hills was a widely successful book in its day: 1907. I can see why. It’s a gripping tale that toes some of the era’s conventions without stepping over any lines. The Shepherd of the Hills features the same kind of blend of mystery and adventure that made Mark Twain what he was, but in place of Twain’s signature witticism, Wright inserts spirituality. And this spirituality is interesting, because on one hand it feels very orthodox Christian, but on the other it is full of a mysticism that I would've imagined not accepted by people of faith at the time. Likewise, the novel has progressive thoughts regarding marriage, gender roles, and other things while at the same time remaining firmly rooted in a very conservative soil.
The Shepherd of the Hills is in part an adventure story, but it is just as much a love letter. It is a love letter to the Ozark hills of Missouri and an allegory for the love letter of Jesus. Surprisingly, considering that the author could've written a very cloying Jesus-loves-you tale without alienating his audience, Wright was cautious in laying the religious allegory on too thick. Even so, I thought the tale dragged on a bit too long for my tastes. The longer it goes, the more the plot is replaced with introspection, and the more Wright’s spiritually intriguing story is pushed aside for a traditional sermon. I think Harold Bell Wright’s story is still read today because it is just different enough and it is mechanically sound, but I do have doubts that it’ll persevere through the next generation or two. There are other authors that I believe better captured the time and they will be the ones who will be remembered in the future.
I think that if I had I read this novel in 1999, along with most of my friends, I probably would’ve “agreed” with our mentor that it was a fabulous book. That’s what you do when you’re young and under the influence of another. I might've even enjoyed it some, but in reality, I wouldn't have loved it all that much. Twenty years late to the party, I can only say that it was a fine read, certainly a good example of the twentieth century’s first decade, but it didn’t grab me the same way it grabbed him. For my former mentor, this was the book to end all books. I’m sure he had his personal reasons why this book touched him so and they probably had to do with the person he was at the moment he first read it. That’s the subjectiveness of reading. Our impression of the written word is a greater reflection of the person we are at the moment we read it than of the work itself. So all that said, if you read my review because you wanted his opinion, then by all means this a five-star book.
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