David Wagoner Books

In his seventh novel, David Wagoner strikes gold in more ways than one. The Road to Many a Wonder has been called "one of the funniest books in English," and "an irresistible comic romance," but these accolades don't do the book justice. The story of 20-year-old Ike Bender's trek to the Denver area during the 1859 Pike's Peak Gold Rush is more a story of the triumph of optimism and faith over overwhelming odds. It's only incidental that the author uses witty, appealingly humorous Western-style backwoods-sounding dialogue and verbal sketches to paint an accurate picture of Ike, his 16-year-old bride Millie, their adopted mule Mr. Blue and the characters they meet up with on their journey.

Through 500 miles of wild and perilous country, past fierce Indians and belligerent villains, Ike and Millie never stray from their upbeat, joyous goal: to be together, happy and prosperous-with gold or without it. With every step, the two young travelers face down the weary and spent faithless who are struggling to retreat.

Ike sums it up best as he describes his confrontation with an unfortunate fellow on the trail: "I didn't have no cause to fight and no time to spare for it, so I just left him behind, wasting his breath and not enjoying hisself or his surroundings, probably not even seeing the way the sun come wavering off and on across the sand and getting hisself all worked up worrying about somebody else getting the best of him. I vowed then and there I wasn't going to do nothing like that, but do my work and take my turn and prepare for the worst and hope for the best and manage with what come along."

This is a message young adults today should hear and ponder. In today's tough world where money means everything and the race is on for who can sprint up the ladder fastest and farthest, students need to be reminded that the joy is in the living, not in the getting.

David Wagoner's heart-warming, upbeat tale of strong faith and love in the face of despair is a top-notch teaching tool. The key to reaching kids today is to make them think they discovered a fabulous new road to take on their own. An invisible push from you and David Wagoner will surely help.

In his seventh novel, David Wagoner strikes gold in more ways than one. The Road to Many a Wonder has been called "one of the funniest books in English," and "an irresistible comic romance," but these accolades don't do the book justice. The story of 20-year-old Ike Bender's trek to the Denver area during the 1859 Pike's Peak Gold Rush is more a story of the triumph of optimism and faith over overwhelming odds. It's only incidental that the author uses witty, appealingly humorous Western-style backwoods-sounding dialogue and verbal sketches to paint an accurate picture of Ike, his 16-year-old bride Millie, their adopted mule Mr. Blue and the characters they meet up with on their journey.

Through 500 miles of wild and perilous country, past fierce Indians and belligerent villains, Ike and Millie never stray from their upbeat, joyous goal: to be together, happy and prosperous-with gold or without it. With every step, the two young travelers face down the weary and spent faithless who are struggling to retreat.

Ike sums it up best as he describes his confrontation with an unfortunate fellow on the trail: "I didn't have no cause to fight and no time to spare for it, so I just left him behind, wasting his breath and not enjoying hisself or his surroundings, probably not even seeing the way the sun come wavering off and on across the sand and getting hisself all worked up worrying about somebody else getting the best of him. I vowed then and there I wasn't going to do nothing like that, but do my work and take my turn and prepare for the worst and hope for the best and manage with what come along."

This is a message young adults today should hear and ponder. In today's tough world where money means everything and the race is on for who can sprint up the ladder fastest and farthest, students need to be reminded that the joy is in the living, not in the getting.

David Wagoner's heart-warming, upbeat tale of strong faith and love in the face of despair is a top-notch teaching tool. The key to reaching kids today is to make them think they discovered a fabulous new road to take on their own. An invisible push from you and David Wagoner will surely help.

The impressively accomplished author of seventeen books of poems and ten novels, David Wagoner is also the recipient of six prizes from "Poetry" and winner of the 1981 Ruth Lilly Prize for poetry. Good Morning And Good Night is the latest anthology showcasing a master poetry at the height of his craft and is a strongly recommended compendium of verse for personal reading as well as academic library literary collections. The Getaway: They had to act natural. They had to look like/They were still parts of an ordinary day/Together on the sidewalk across the street/To the unfamiliar car, yet they had to be/Quick about it without running. They had to think/Taking those steps, remembering, knowing/Every foot they could put between their bodies/And the scene behind them, where the noise/Of buzzers and bells and yowling/And terribly shocked voices was growing/Louder and louder. They pulled away/As calmly as possible, staring straight ahead/Straight-faced, not glancing once/To either side or backward, let alone/At each other, and took a turn in the most unlikely/Direction they could think of. Under the limit,/They drove steadily, legally toward home.

i first saw this book in the hands of a boy who admired the brevity and stark reality of these words. these lingering tangents are for readers who sometimes admire just the leaves rather than the whole tree.

David Wagoner pulls you in with a giant yank from his very first lines:

When the bank blew up, I had just got to the part in "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" where it was an Oink Oink here and an Oink Oink there (it's easier to grunt on a mouth harp than do most anything else, so I was stretching it out a little to make up for spoiling it later on when the Gobble Gobbles commenced), and at first I thought I'd busted my eardrums from blowing too hard.

In one short paragraph the reader knows he or she is in for wild times, and Wagoner delivers. Tracker is the moving, astonishing, touching and hilarious story of 15-year-old orphan Eli in 1889 Colorado. Raised by an abusive livery stable owner, Eli has lived over a barn all his life, pitching hay by day but dreaming by night of following his hero, the half-Indian old gray-headed man, Tracker Byrd.

When bandits dynamite and then rob the First National Bank of Sheepshank, Colorado, Eli seizes his chance. If he can hire on as part of the posse chasing the villains, he will at the same time learn tracking from Tracker Byrd.

Eli and Tracker split off from the rest of the posse, finding excitement and trouble all along the trail. One walking package of excitement and trouble is Miz Cherry Bastion, a girl so beautiful but headstrong that Eli calls her "both sides of a sermon, the harp music and the sinner's roast."

David Wagoner departs from the stale Western formula of the straight-and-narrow, do-gooder hero and his lily-white, sweet-as-honey love interest. Eli is honest but human, and grapples with his conscience often-with sometimes shaky but hilarious results. Miz Cherry Bastion is about as sweet as vinegar and twice as hard to swallow. Eli's so-called hero, Tracker Byrd, is a hard-drinking, wisecracking old varmint who alternatively delights and dismays Eli.

By painting the characters believable and human, Wagoner does young adult readers a favor. He uses real-life personalities and problems in a make-believe world to allow his readers to learn some concrete answers for today's topsy-turvy world. Sometimes a model or mock-up of a troublesome situation helps overcome perception difficulties.

Tracker is a good role model for today. David Wagoner uses no objectionable language or situations in his novel-he doesn't have to. His clear writing and down-to-earth backwoods style language and wisdom (mixed with generous portions of humor) tell a good story of how far perseverance, trust, and a good healthy does of optimism can take you. Listen to Tracker teaching Eli as Eli teaches the reader:

"Let me put it to you serious," [Tracker] says. "All right, you're chasing some bank robbers. What had you figured on doing when you caught up with them?" "Why, I don't know," I says, shamed to admit I'd been thinking more about improving myself and looking for sign than anything else. It was a beautiful day, and the sun made every crack, stick, grass-blade, weed-stalk, and rock-edge, near and far, look like it was fit to bust, just for the sheer pleasure of being itself and not shaped like nothing else nor colored the same nor standing or laying the same way. What difference did it make if we caught somebody or not? "Take them into custody, I reckon." "Where's that at?" Tracker says. "Where's that 'custody' at?" I tried to be patient with him. "I mean back to Sheepshank so's they can get a fair trial for bank-busting."

P.S. Anyone who has such fun with the English language is bound to be a good poet. Here's a chance to lure the unwary into poetry. David Wagoner is known more for his poetry today than his novels. If the young adult reader loves the novels, perhaps he or she will give the poetry a whack (although Wagoner's wonderfully irreverent way with words is absent in his poetry-too bad!) After all, David Wagoner himself thinks he's a better poet than novelist. Are you sure, David?

The power of the word. The poem 'Walt Whitman Bathing' deserves a special Pulitzer Prize alone. Written a simple clauses, the poem is loaded with words that made me stop, think, and read on, again and again. Wagoner's arc in this collection is from childhood to old age. The words stayed the same. The context changed. And this is who we are. Give this book to someone as a gift. Gift. What a beautiful word. Wagoner. Another.

This book is a lost gem of real fun and zestful living in a surreal world of what could be the West or the Midwest of a time ago. You will laugh out loud at the antics and mouthings of this young kid. Coming of age wouldn't describe it. Wagoner is a genius.

I've loved this book for more than 20 years. Wagoner makes the myths and sensibilities of the native people of the Pacific Northwest come alive in simple powerful language.

The poems stick in my head. I remember his ``Songs for the Bones of Salmon'' every time I put a bite of salmon into my mouth. ``Lost'' resonates for me whenever I step out into the forest and see the nurse logs of fallen cedar trees, and the salal and ferny undergrowth.

And his ``Burial Poem'' has become the mandatory reading at all our family funerals. It is elegant, spare, and presents an attitude toward death that I find consistent with my family's ecological and theological values.

I do admire Wagoner's later work, but this is the book above all others that I esteem.

I liked the lyrical nature of the poems he wrote, but some were a little lacking. For me, a good poem has to have substance, but I missed some of that in this poetry selection. Perhaps I'm not looking deeply enough, but the best poems by David have always been his nature poems, and I felt this didn't have enough of those to form a complete collection.

Sometimes his poems have compelling rhetoric that make you think deeply, and his style is at its peak. Other times I feel there is no connection between his words and their actual meaning, just experiences he happened to write down.

Lyricism, as usual, is great, top-notch, and needs no refining. Wonderfully written if you are a Wagoner fan, but if you can, try to get his latest book of collected poems, Traveling Light. That's my favorite poetry book right now. :)