A New Deal painting assignment in Wyoming begins an epic American road trip to find Eve after she disappears from her Wyoming home.

I thought it was nicely written with a lot of Americana and American life and struggle during the Depression.

Themes:
🎨🖼️👨‍🎨🖌️🌄🏔️🚗🇺🇸

My feelings: 🙂🤓

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A quick read, but sort of flat for me. It would have been a lot more dynamic/personal very easily. Easy and ordinary!

A magnificent book of a Depression-era artist and the love triangle (love square?) into which he's drawn. A wealthy landowner, his much younger bride, and a wizened ranch hand each have something to offer the artist -- and something to take from him, too. The language here is rich, heavy with meaning and detail. You'll want to see the art the narrator mentions for yourself .... and you'll find that his perspective is spot-on there, as well. A book that will stay with you long after you've finished.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC and the opportunity to read and review The Trackers.

I wish I could say I had a more favorable opinion to offer, but after over half of this book I just didn’t have the interest or commitment to finish. As I recall, Cold Mountain, also written by Frazier was the same sort of read for me.

Like it’s main character, the painter, Val, wandering around the US looking for Long’s runaway wife, this book was a meandering amble with no point or destination in mind that I could see. Like Cold Mountain, I found myself skimming and skipping through it hoping I would eventually land on a plot. It was not to be. With so many excellent books available I dropped this and moved on.

This is Frazier's best since Cold Mountain. It has a riveting plot that will keep you guessing until the very end. Finally Frazier is once again on his A game.

A made for a movie kind of book. For some reason, The Bridges of Madison County comes to mind in the connections and missed connections of the major characters, Thanks to NetGalley for a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

Frazier offers an immersive story that morphs from a WPA-funded rural art commission to a leisurely country-wide search, an unlikely obsession, moments of brutality, strange connections, and, finally, an upended set of circumstances.

In The Trackers, Cold Mountain author Charles Frazier offers historical fiction featuring a Great Depression-era painter, Val Welch, traveling west to a small rural town in Wyoming.

As part of a New Deal grant, Val has landed the job of painting a mural on the Dawes, Wyoming, post office. In Dawes, he meets eccentric, wealthy art lovers John and Eve Long--mysterious, possibly hiding something, and certainly unpredictable.

When Eve takes off from Dawes with a piece of valuable artwork, Val agrees to follow her--and uncovers long-buried secrets that could change everything.

The situation is complicated between Val and Eve and John, Eve and John themselves, and regarding the couple's circumspect right-hand-man cowboy Faro. Many things go unsaid, while deep, defining secrets are also revealed.

I love a Great Depression-set story, and in Frazier's literary fiction The Trackers, he immerses us in the resentments, desperation, and tiredness of the period. The search for Eve morphs into an uncomfortable encounter between Val and a volatile family; a terrible evasion effort on the part of Val; and an unusual connection between Eve, Val, and Faro. Yet loyalties variously rule all or fade away as an unlikely set of alliances and relationships stand at the end of the story.

Frazier's writing is gorgeous, evoking the stark western landscapes Val passes through, gritty San Francisco, and the powerful cliffside ocean as well as lush, wild, wet Florida and its accompanying corruption and danger.

I received a prepublication version of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Ecco.

Frazier is a fantastic writer! He vividly described the scenery of post-Depression America in this book. It is a part of history that is not written about in novels very often, so it was interesting to learn about that time period. It was a bit slow and drawn out, but those who are fans of sweeping epics will love it. The characters weren't all likeable, but Faro was my favorite.

This novel started off very slowly, so much so that I put it aside a couple times. It took almost to the middle of the book for the pace to pick up, but the characters remained flat and underdeveloped. What's left is an interesting portrayal of Depression era conditions in the American West, as seen through the eyes of a painter working for the WPA, a wealthy rancher with political aspirations, a young woman who's spent too much time riding the rails and singing in bars to ever settle down in one place, and a mysterious cowboy about whom we know almost nothing. 2-1/2 stars rounded up to three means a little better than just OK, but I can't say I really liked it.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a complimentary e-ARC in exchange for an objective review.

I'm a sucker for anything to do with the New Deal, the WPA, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, the American West, and the 1930s in general.

Charles Frazier is a master of historical fiction, and The Trackers is a beautiful example of his craft. It is clear he spent considerable time researching the details. Set during the Great Depression, the novel tells the story of a young artist, Valentine Welch, who is sent to Wyoming to paint a WPA mural for a small-town post office. While there, his life becomes entangled with those of his patron—a wealthy ranch owner with political ambitions, the patron's wife—a former hobo and country dancehall band singer, and Faro—the head cowboy with a mysterious past.

Frazier's writing is simultaneously spare and colorful, economical in the best way, yet evocative, and he brings the world of the Great Depression to life with vivid details. One scene that sticks with me was a diversion to Florida. Frazier's depiction of the people and, particularly, the attitudes of rural Florida of the 1930s could have been written today, and his metaphor for our very recent past in the USA is crystal clear, alternatingly hilarious and terrifying (but mostly terrifying).

My favorite quote:
Val talking to his cab driver in Florida, a Cuban American who he worries

“believed the ideal rather than the reality, believed all the bring-me-your-tired-huddled-masses, the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, and all that...stuff about education and effort being the sure path to a better life … I set in to warn him, telling him that in New York and the other wealth centers of the nation, they use those convenient dreams to mash lower classes flat and build personal fortunes. They slap their knees laughing at the naivete, wipe their asses on trust and ignorance.”


The Trackers is beautifully written, suspenseful, and engaging. I found the ending a bit anticlimactic, but I suppose that added to the vérité of the story. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction or complex characters.

I was eager to read The Trackers by Charles Frazier because of the plot about a young man who is awarded the opportunity to paint a mural in a post office in a small town in Wyoming during the depression.

The story centers on Val, the painter, and his host in Wyoming, wealthy John Long and his captivating younger wife, Eve. The dynamic among the three of them was quite interesting to begin with, but when Eve disappears and John asks Val to travel around the country to track her down, the action really picks up. The plot was a little quirky, and the lack of clear dialogue (no quotation marks) threw me off a little at first. I feel the book is redeemed by the characters. Val was charming, Eve was mysterious, and the ranch hand Faro was someone I wanted to know more about. Altogether, it felt like a western with some deeper philosophical ponderings. Although the ending did not completely resolve itself, I felt satisfied that it was fitting to the story.

I will recommend this to readers who like historical fiction with a western feel.

Thank you to Ecco and NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Charles Frazier gives us another riveting tale of a journey every bit as interesting as Cold Mountain. The setting, combining the period of the depression with the old west, is particular and fresh rather than stale. A cast of characters, again all wholly original, grab and hold the reader's attention. Highly recommended and a must read for Frazier fans.

Thanks to Ecco for my advanced copy of The Trackers by Charles Frazier.

I enjoyed this book, but it was a little too slow for me. I liked the Depression/WPA aspect and wanted more of that and life in the small town of Dawes, Wyoming.

The cross country travels to find Eve were kinda boring in my opinion and at times this book felt more character-driven than I expected.

As with his blockbuster Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier has a talent and eye for bringing past eras to life, in this case, the depressive 1930s, pre-World War II but still resounding with effects from the previous war. Through the eyes of a commissioned mural painter, he presents life on a prosperous Wyoming ranch, but also there is a vivid portrait of Seattle. Well done.

The novel had a slow build up to any action and plot. Like other novels by Frazier, the detail here is particular and enhances the story.

Set in the depression of the 1930s, Valentine, or Val has he liked to be called, arrives at the small town of Dawes, Wyoming, a rural town in the West. Working for the Conservation Corps, he’s hired to paint a mural in the post office. The instructions say to portray hope. Val has free room and board with a local rich rancher and his wife, Long and Eve.

Things are going well, until Eve leaves with a Renoir painting of Long’s and the husband suspects she’s left to see her previous husband, whom Eve says is dead. Long has political ambitions and hopes her previous marriage won’t pose any problems, like her being a bigamist. Long pays Val handsomely to cross the country playing detective.

This wasn’t the best book by Frazier, nor the worst either. There were some meditative moments within the book, however I was hoping for a bit more on art and painting, since that is at the center. Overall, I did enjoy reading this.

This spare, languorous Depression-era Western noir is a masterpiece of characterization and language. Frazier amazes with what seems to be a simple set-up: a WPA mural painter, assigned to work on a post office mural in a small western town, gets involved more and more deeply with his ambitious, rancher host, his band-singer wife, and his chief ranch hand. It took a while to discover who is tracking whom, and why, but the story grabs you until you finish, and wished you weren’t. I read a publisher’s ebook ARC courtesy of NetGalley. Grateful for good formatting.

The Trackers will likely appeal to you if
You enjoy historical fiction and want to go to a time rarely covered by this genre.
You want your historical fiction to be well-researched and teach you something new about and era or time.
You enjoy books set in the western US.
You are a fan of slower-burning character-focused novels.
I love historical fiction that takes on unique stories. The Trackers' primary setting is Wyoming, but it also takes the reader on a cross-country adventure to Seattle, the Florida swamps, and California's bay area. This is a Depression-era story, but unlike most novels set in this period, it isn't about the Dust Bowl or migrant workers. For me, this was its biggest attraction. I enjoyed learning more about the main character's work as a New Deal mural painter.

The plot is slow and steady - not a page-turner; it unfurls in a manner that slowly pulls the reader in. Engaging with the characters fully took a while, but I eventually grew attached. A reveal in the last third made the book incredibly satisfying as historical fiction - but no spoilers here.

Fans of US-based 20th-century historical fiction should pick this book up.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an electronic ARC in return for a review.

This book has a lot of very promising elements from atmospheric settings in a time period that has worked very well for previous novels to an epic storyline of adventure. However, even with all those great elements I felt like at times it was still hard to get through this novel, which likely comes down to the characters. To me, the characters felt underdeveloped and I was mostly indifferent towards all of them. That being said, I still found this novel interesting at times and it had a solid ending along with the aforementioned strengths. Overall, I think it is a decent book that could have been a very good or even great book if the characters felt more real and evoked some type of emotions in me as the reader.

Unfortunately, the things that I enjoyed about this book make a short list. As someone who reads a lot of historical fiction, I did appreciate that this novel is set during the WPA / New Deal post-Depression era which does not get a ton of coverage. I was engaged with the plot because we were visiting a unique and less frequently written about period. I think the mystery element of where his wife went and why kept me reading through my frustrations with the speed and lack of complexity of the plot and characters.

I'm disappointed that I that this book was 2/5 stars for me. I kept waiting for the plot to pick up and for me to get invested because this book sent me into a huge reading tailspin. I really struggled to pick this book up because I did not care. The plot moved incredibly slowly, and the characters are written in a way where they feel purposefully unknowable or likable. This novel is incredibly slow but without being character driven or having poetic writing, which for me usually compensates. Some moments felt overtly political - Florida and the people there are a wasteland, and the Supreme Court is a corrupt joke - and that took me even more out of the plot. Also, this feels like the gazillionth book I've read without quotations mark, is anyone using them anymore at this point? "What gives - they serve a purpose, let's use 'em guys," said the frustrated reader.

Charles Frazier's latest novel, The Trackers, tells the fascinating story of Val Welch, a young artist hired to paint a public mural as part of a New Deal art project. He travels to Dawes, Wyoming where he will create a mural for the new post office that depicts the local region. Set in Depression-era America, Val constantly encounters extremes in the character's he meets. He lives with a wealthy land owner and his beautiful wife and Val becomes entangled in their lives. Val goes on an unexpected journey that puts his life in jeopardy. Frazier's descriptive writing style brings his reader directly into the novel's plot and his fascinating characters will linger in the reader's thoughts. Although the title is simple, the complex story makes this a wonderful book to read.