Curt Marder, the narrator of this ironic anti-Western, is a coward, hopelessly prejudiced, utterly lacking in moral sense, and not especially clever. When outlaws burn down his house, kidnap his wife and shoot his dog, the neighbours are all very upset about the dog, but it seems that no-one is going to help him to rescue poor Sadie. Eventually he manages to secure the assistance of Bubba, the only African-American in the district, a man who has spent so much of his life being chased that he has become an expert tracker himself.

Naturally, the partnership is not without its difficulties, but, this being an Everett novel, we can be pretty sure that the incompatible pair will not bond, Hollywood-style, to form an unlikely friendship. Bubba knows perfectly well that he can’t trust Marder, and Marder is too dim to see how much he owes to Bubba, so they go on hating each other to the last page.

A dark, unrelenting, and very funny story, complete with gunfights, painted ladies, the Silver Dollar Saloon, a stagecoach, Red Indians and the 7th Cavalry. But not quite in the mix you might expect from a Western, and strongly laced with Everett’s characteristic antipathy toward neat narrative closure… ( )

Main fella in the story is one Curt Marder. His story - “They burned my house and my barn, killed my milk cow and my best pulling mule and then run off with my Sadie, my woman, the light of my life.” They also killed his dog. A terrible story all told, though most that hear it give their condolences just for the dog!

Marder throws in with a kid named Jake and a tracker named Bubba to hunt those dirty no-good-fers down and kill ‘em. It's a really, really good story with a great mix of humor and action. But I really didn't like the end, not at all. I'm taking away a whole star for that ending. ( )

Curt Marder is feckless, weak, casually racist, and none too smart. Somewhere in the west in 1871 he hires a black tracker named Bubba, an escaped slave, to find his kidnapped wife. Of course, Curt witnessed the kidnapping and sacking of his homestead and did nothing about it.

Curt's philosophy, if it could be said he has one: "I'd learned my frontier Christian lessons well - lie, steal, cheat, and, when all that failed, pray."

Bubba and Curt are the most unusual pair, as evident when they trade their hopes and aspirations. Curt wants money, prestige, land and the ability to boss people around.
Bubba: "All I want is one day where I ain't got to worry about a white man decidin' I looked crosswise at him, one day where I ain't got to worry just 'cause I hear a rider behind me, one day where I ain't called a boy."
Curt: "That ain't much of a dream."

Bubba even needs to tutor Curt on how to deal with Indians, basically telling him to treat them the way he'd want to be treated.

When you think Curt is coming around on the race issue - and he may be - his self-preservation kicks in. God's Country is a parable of inequity, truly evident only in the last scene. And it's wickedly funny. ( )

http://moloch981.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/gods-country/ ( )

made me laugh til I hurt. His unlikeable character is most certainly that, in a most hilarious way. a "must read" for those who crave "something different" books. ( )