Sick Heart River (World's Classics)

by JohnBuchan (Author), David Daniell (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $3.40

  `I have made my peace with the North, faced up to it, defied it, and so won its blessing.' Given a year to live, lawyer and MP Sir Edward Leithern fears he will die unfulfilled and disillusioned. He resolves to devote his last energies to finding and restoring to health a young Canadian banker, Galliard, whose own personal crisis has led him to seek solace in the search for the distant River of the Sick Heart in remotest north-west Canada. Enduring a severe Arctic winter, Leithen finds Galliard and feels his own health returning. The North has healed both men, but only one will return to civilization. Sick Heart River (1941) was John Buchan's last novel, published after his death while in his final year of office as Governor-General of Canada, and many consider it his finest. This edition is helpfully annotated and has a substantial introduction which considers the novel's vital place in British and Canadian literature of the mid century. This book is intended for general readers; students of the adventure novel, colonial literature (Canada).

• Used

  Paperback
  1985

  $3.25

• New

  Paperback
  2007

  $11.72

  Sick Heart River is John Buchan's most powerful novel and his last, completed days before his death. It was published posthumously in 1941. Buchan's rich descriptions of the rugged Canadian Northwest Territories are influenced by his real-life voyage down the Mackenzie River in 1937. At that time, Buchan was Governor-General of Canada. The main character, the lawyer and politician Sir Edward Leithen - perhaps the most autobiographical of Buchan's characters - has been diagnosed with advanced tuberculosis and has been given a year to live. A former colleague, American John S. Blenkiron, requests help to find his niece's husband, who appears to have flown from his very successful financial career to the Canadian north. Leithen agrees to help.