Sweet Promised Land

One of the most poetic and moving stories I've ever read. Great portrayal of characters and of a people and life style probably gone forever.

"This was the way it was with him. In this first moment of homecoming, all the years in between meant nothing. The day he had left, he was a young man and his sisters were young and his brothers alive, and this was the next day, and he and his sisters were old, and all his brothers were dead, and the forty-seven years in between had not happened. He had left home one day, yesterday, and come home today, and the change was too much for him to bear." This was a moving story of a Nevada sheepherder returning to his home in the Pyrenees of France after 47 years. Easy to read and full of descriptive prose, Robert Laxalt combines in this story the poetry of place with the passion of lost family and friends.

This book, the story of a Basque immigrant seen through the eyes of his journalist and politician sons, would have been compelling reading when it was first penned in 1957. What makes it even more interesting fifty-five years later is the combination of the universal (the immigrant experience) with specific, the Basque sheepherder who came to Nevada in the early twentieth century and returned to his homeland for a visit mid-century. The world described here, at least in Nevada and I suspect, the Basque part of France, is rapidly fading. A luminous tribute to a father.

This is an absolutely outstanding book about the true story of an immigrant. It conveys the various emotions and experiences of one who left his native country for a new land. Anyone who's a first-generation immigrant or knows a family member that was will be especially able to relate with the people profiled in this book. As a aside, this book reminds me somewhat of the underlying theme in many of William Saroyan's books, namely his struggle with his dual identity - "am I an American or an Armenian".

A wonderful book about a Basque mans life in America. His struggles, hardships and sucesses are amazing in an America that no longer exists. Inspiring and emotional.