Fisher, Karen 1961–

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Fisher, Karen 1961–

PERSONAL: Born 1961; married; husband's name, David; children: three. Education: Graduated from University of California.

ADDRESSES: Home—Lopez Island, WA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Novelist, screenplay writer, educator, and business owner. Has worked as a teacher in a boarding school and as an organic potato farmer.

AWARDS, HONORS: Mountains and Plains Booksellers' Association Award, 2005, for best fiction; finalist for PEN/Faulkner Award, 2006, for A Sudden Country.

WRITINGS:

A Sudden Country (novel), Random House (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Novelist Karen Fisher found the inspiration for her debut novel, A Sudden Country, in the difficult westward journey faced by her ancestors. Ancestor Emma Mitchell crossed the unforgiving west in 1847, when she was eleven years old. An account of Emma's journey and harrowing encounters with Cayuse tribe members helped Fisher construct the background of her novel, causing her to discard years of drafts and begin anew. Fisher herself has lived close to the land as her ancestors did, working as a potato farmer, owner of a tree service business, and a seller of firewood. Fisher's life on the farm was difficult, presenting challenges she had never experienced before. But she learned vital survival skills, such as how to split firewood and butcher deer. "Each month brought some new lesson, and for a writer, the most important one was this: that facts and ideas were not enough to write from. Only by feeling a life could I understand it," she observed in an article for BookPage.com. "Only by living could I feel it."

The lives she "feels" and translates to fiction are those of frontiersman James MacLaren and Lucy Mitchell, two westward travelers whose lives intersected in the vastness of pioneer Oregon. MacLaren's children have died of smallpox, and his Nez Perce wife has abandoned him for another man, leaving him bereft and grieving. Lucy, once widowed and the mother of an infant girl, has reluctantly agreed to accompany her second husband, Israel Mitchell, from Iowa to the promised riches of the Oregon territory. MacLaren and Lucy meet when he signs on to guide their wagon train westward. The two quickly connect, and their doomed love affair is brief but intense, sorrowful but life-altering. They "part stronger and wiser—flawed, but noble, exemplars of their moment in history," observed a Kirkus Reviews critic.

Fisher's "craft shows in her words and attention to details," commented Bob Minzesheimer, writing a review of A Sudden Country in USA Today. "But this is not a novel for impatient readers, driven by page-turning plots." Entertainment Weekly contributor Karen Karbo made a similar observation, stating that the book "requires a patient reader, but the spell it casts is transformative and rare."

"With this compelling account of life on the Oregon Trail and the waning days of the fur trade, newcomer Fisher offers a literary masterpiece," remarked Reba Leiding in Library Journal. Minzesheimer stated that "Fisher has written a work of art, true to its terrain," while the Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book "a vigorous, deeply moving work of historical fiction." Fisher "brilliantly illuminates both the tragedy and the new life wrought by manifest destiny," commented a reviewer in Publishers Weekly, concluding "This is a great novel of the American West."