From Publishers Weekly
In this third volume of McMurtry's Berrybender Narratives, Lord Berrybender and his obnoxious, sniveling brood are, surprisingly, still alive on the dangerous Great Plains of Wyoming and Colorado. The wry story of mountainman adventure and European stupidity, set in the 1830s, is just as wacky and gruesome as its predecessors, Sin Killer and The Wandering Hill. Lord Berrybender is a pompous, lecherous, drunken, one-legged English aristocrat on a hunting expedition in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Surrounded by his four willful and opinionated daughters, inept servants and a haughty mistress, he is protected by an accompanying group of unwashed mountainmen and trappers. His eldest daughter, the vulgar and loudmouthed Tasmin, is married to Indian fighter Jim Snow, aka Sin Killer, and their marital relations are anything but blissful. In this installment, the hunting party slowly travels from its winter camp in the north, southward toward Santa Fe, on a journey filled with seduction, infidelity, short tempers, heat, thirst, Indian attacks and ever more lusty copulation. The sudden and unlikely arrival of two European journalists in a hot air balloon brings more tragic comedy to the prairie soap opera; other irritants include a smallpox epidemic, a mysterious Indian who cuts off the ears of sleeping white men and a murderously insane Mexican army captain. McMurtry's Europeans are all idiots, while the Indians and mountainmen, including Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick and Hugh Glass, are portrayed as honorable men. The Berrybender clan is so annoying one wishes they would all be massacred by the Indians, but enough of them survive to ensure there will be plenty of Berrybenders to kill off in the next installment. One can only hope.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Molina reads in soft-spoken, comfortable tones that make the listener's experience relaxing, as well as entertaining. McMurtry continues his saga of Lord Berrybender and his four willful daughters, his haughty mistress, and their inept servants. As these characters meet up with real historical figures like Kit Carson, Charles Bent, and Pomp Charbonneau, the ironies, vanities, and tragedies of the West are revealed. Alfred Molina finds unique male and female voices for McMurtry's finely drawn cast. He precisely captures Tasmin Berrybender Snow's frosty temperament and her primitive frontiersman, Jim's, frustration and bewilderment. Molina's accents for everyone from Sioux war chief to English journalist and French aristocrat are perfect and engaging. S.C.A. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
A party of Ute warriors placidly negotiates the price of trade goods with a group of mountain men whose encampment they had murderously raided the previous day. A pair of slightly absurd European travelers manages to escape menacing Sioux by inflating a hot-air balloon and flying over their stupefied foes. This is the third installment of the projected four-volume Berrybender saga, which tracks a British family and a motley assortment of comrades as they traipse across the trans-Mississippi West in the 1830s. As in the earlier novels, the focus of the narrative is Tasmin Berrybender and her strange (even to her) attachment to her husband, the rather primitive frontiersman Jim Snow. As the Berrybenders move from South Pass toward Santa Fe, McMurtry relates numerous, seriocomic incidents like those above, revealing the West as a place where irony, vanity, and tragedy are inevitably intertwined. Tasmin and Jim are certainly wonderful literary creations; equally interesting and memorable are McMurtry's finely drawn portrayals of actual historical characters, including Kit Carson, Jim Bridges, Charles Bent, and Pomp Charbonneau. Each plays his part in an exciting, humorous, but often heartbreaking story that unfolds across magnificent, dangerous, and often deadly landscapes. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry continues his four-part epic, The Berrybender Narratives, with a new novel of courage and hardship that transports readers to a time when life itself was an adventure, and death was ever close at hand.... In their trek through the 1830s American West, the Berrybender family has experienced every blessing and hardship imaginable, by both the hand of man and the will of God. Now, Tasmin Berrybender leads her unconventional family as they struggle through an unforgiving land, losing loved ones and gathering new cohorts at the most unlikely turns. It is in these perilous circumstances that Tasmin's husband, the Sin Killer, disappears on a scouting expedition, leaving her to raise her young, wild son alone -- until she falls for another man. In this high-spirited and terrifying tale set against the background of the American frontier, Larry McMurtry once again shows that in the world of Western literary fiction, he truly has no equal.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

At the heart of this third volume of Larry McMurtry's Western saga remains the beautiful and determined Tasmin Berrybender, now married to the "Sin Killer" and mother to their young son, Monty, who, although Tasmin intends him to be an English gentleman like his grandfather, is at the moment living the childhood of a savage.

By Sorrow's River continues the Berrybender party's trail across the endless Great Plains of the West toward Santa Fe, where they intend, those who are lucky enough to survive the journey, to spend the winter. Along the way, Tasmin, whose husband, Jim Snow, has vanished off to scout ahead of them, falls in love with Pomp Charbonneau, only to see him killed by the ruthless commander of Spanish troops, while her father, Lord Berrybender, now reduced to limping along on one leg and a pair of crutches, increasingly makes a fool of himself by falling in love with his own mistress. They meet up with a vast cast of characters from the history of the West: Kit Carson, the famous scout, Le Partezon, the fearsome Sioux war chief; The Ear Taker, an Indian whose specialty is creeping up on people while they are asleep and slicing an ear off with a sharp knife; two aristocratic Frenchmen whose eccentric aim is to cross the Great Plains by hot air balloon; a party of slavers led by the cowardly but bloodthirsty Obregon; a band of raiding Pawnee; and many other characters who prove, once again, that the rolling, grassy plains are not, in fact, nearly as empty of life as they look. Most of what is there is dangerous and hostile, even when faced with Tasmin's remarkable, frosty sangfroid. She is one of the strongest and most interesting of Larry McMurtry's women characters,fairly resistant to shock, whether at bloodshed, the behavior of children, or sex, and at the center of this novel of the West.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Washington Post

From the Missouri Breaks to the Rocky Mountains, and the Canadian border to Mexico, no novelist since Wallace Stegner has written as well about the American West as Larry McMurtry. By Sorrow's River, volume three of McMurtry's Berrybender Narratives, is no exception. It's lively, funny, historically illuminating and, best of all, full of unforgettable individualists, from an irascible English big-game hunter, Lord Berrybender himself, to his headstrong and beautiful daughter, Tasmin. —Howard Frank Mosher

Publishers Weekly

Molina keeps the bar raised high with his latest performance of McMurtry's third Berrybender Narrative. As with his readings of the previous two volumes, Sin Killer and The Wandering Hill, Molina creates richly nuanced voices for the many characters in this Wild West tale, from the energetic and innocent young guide Kit Carson to the comically selfish old Lord Berrybender, whose pursuit of drink, fornication and wildlife to shoot is what has brought his aristocratic, idiosyncratic and self-centered British clan to the wild and unforgiving Great Plains. This installment revolves around Berrybender's eldest daughter, Tasmin. Having married and mothered a child with the stoic and sometimes brutal frontiersman Jim Snow, also known as the Sin Killer, Tasmin's heart is now drawn to their quiet and emotionally distant guide, Pomp Charbonneau. Though the story seems to lose some of its steam as it explores the nuances of Tasmin's torn-between-two-lovers quandary, Molina's pace never slows. Even when he is not breathing life into a character, his role as narrator is played with such earnest urgency that it keeps the momentum high and the listener wanting more. Simultaneous release with the S&S hardcover (Forecasts, Aug. 25, 2003). (Nov.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

One tends to think that the Great Plains of the 1830s was empty, but the wandering Berrybenders manage to meet just about everyone who was anyone at the time. This third of a four-part series suffers because there is no beginning and no end-the action is much the same as in the previous installments. Lord Berrybender, the one-legged English aristocrat, is still alive and still hunting and still randy, although his mistress's threat to tear his throat out subdues him somewhat. The old man is traveling south toward Santa Fe with his four daughters and his moronic servants, a bunch of Indians, and the ever-faithful mountain men when the group is joined by a pair of hapless European journalists in a hot-air balloon. What could have been a rather exciting event deflates quickly into the same old tragicomedy that hallmarks these works. The listener will be grateful that Alfred Molina gives his usual dazzling performance and that the pacing is good. Recommended for public libraries where the other volumes have circulated.-Barbara Perkins, formerly with Irving P.L., TX Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

AudioFile

Molina reads in soft-spoken, comfortable tones that make the listener's experience relaxing, as well as entertaining. McMurtry continues his saga of Lord Berrybender and his four willful daughters, his haughty mistress, and their inept servants. As these characters meet up with real historical figures like Kit Carson, Charles Bent, and Pomp Charbonneau, the ironies, vanities, and tragedies of the West are revealed. Alfred Molina finds unique male and female voices for McMurtry's finely drawn cast. He precisely captures Tasmin Berrybender Snow's frosty temperament and her primitive frontiersman, Jim's, frustration and bewilderment. Molina's accents for everyone from Sioux war chief to English journalist and French aristocrat are perfect and engaging. S.C.A. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
© AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews