Some books are like a gourmet dinner that a cook slaves over for hours, or even days, and then is consumed in a manner of minutes.

“A Sudden Country” is not that kind of book.

The preparation was long and arduous for author Karen Fisher, it took 14 years, but the result is a book to savor slowly, making it last as long as possible.

Like a gourmet meal, this is a

work of art.

The story is set on the Oregon Trail, but it’s not a shoot ‘em up Western. There’s a love story, but it’s not a bodice-ripper romance novel. It tells the story of pioneer life, but it’s not a dry history book.

What it is, is 363 pages of lyrical prose that explores the lives of two people who long for something beyond the daily misery of their lives, and find it in each other.

Lucy Mitchell is a remarried widow who still mourns the death of her first husband while making the grueling trek across young America with her second husband and four children; James MacLaren is a Hudson’s Bay Company trader who has lost his family to small pox and is adrift in his sorrow.

He joins the Mitchells’ wagon train as a driver, and as they move further from civilization, he and Lucy are drawn to each other.

Critical praise

The novel is published by Random House, a coup for any first-time author, and has been receiving high praise from critics, who have compared it to Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses” and Charles Frazier’s “Cold Mountain.”

“A grand mesmerizing novel,” said Publishers Weekly; “Elegantly written and powerfully original: a magnificent story and a remarkable debut,” said the Kirkus Review.

A USA Today critic wrote: “Not since Cormac McCarthy’s 1992 modern-day Western, ‘All the Pretty Horses,’ has a novel’s opening been as mystifying and mesmerizing. Like McCarthy, Fisher has written a work of art, true to its terrain.”

“The heartbreaking first chapter alone is worth any number of lesser novels,” Entertainment Weekly proclaimed.

John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intellingencer book critic, named it as one of his top 10 books of 2005, calling it, “. . . one of the year’s most memorable debut novels. Fisher did for the Oregon Trail what Charles Frazier did for the Civil War with ‘Cold Mountain’ — elevating a threadbare tale from American history into a haunting reading experience, and one most relevant for Northwest readers.”

Such lofty praise was earned with passages such as this, as MacLaren carries his last surviving child to a mission where he hopes she can be saved from death: “All his life, he’s only gone from one thing to the next, only done what needed doing. His world had all been wood and water, fire, food; it had all been journeys needing made, traplines to set, a world of things to mend and mind with never time enough. But these past few weeks had taught a different kind of seeing. It was as though such endless diligence had muffled him somehow. But here now were the curled edges of his daughter’s ermine scarf, and he could see the hairs stir in the wind, and could see each crack and split in her small lips. He had learned, in these past weeks, the shapes of her knees, her feet, had seen her secret skin. He knew the hard black scabs of scars she would come to live with. If he could command it.

She looked at him.

You are mine, he thought. With his eyes, again, he saved her.

She began to cough. He waited. Fed the fire. The wind came up and sprang the pines, and showered them with snow.”

The writer’s life

Author Karen Fisher may seem an unlikely heir to the literary throne: a 44-year-old mother of three, living on a farm on Lopez Island, juggling writing with raising a family and caring for six horses, but her life experiences make her the perfect person to write about the Oregon Trail.

She has worked as a carpenter, teacher, wrangler and farmer, forsaking a more comfortable life so that she could have time to write Lucy and James’ story.

Her husband Dave has been a constant source of support, and was the one who told her she should write a book all those years ago.

In a phone interview from her modest farm on Lopez she talked about the long journey of “A Sudden Country.”

“We always arranged our lives so I could work part time so I could write,” she said, even if that meant driving a beater car, or less presents under the tree at Christmas.

“We sacrificed a lot,” she added.

For her children, ages 13, 11 and 7, Mom working on her book had always been a part of their lives.

Once the book was written, there was the rejection from publishers.

In fact, “There were hundreds of rejections,” she said.

Finally Fisher attended a writers’ workshop where an instructor took a liking to it, and passed it on to two agents.

High hopes were dashed when the first agent passed on the book.

“We were so close to giving up,” Fisher said. “After years of my husband saying, ‘You can do it,’ we finally both said it’s not going to work. Then — and I know I’ve built this up into a myth — the phone rang.”

The second agent was on the line, saying Random House was interested in “A Sudden Country.”

The major publishing house picked up the book, but Fisher said they didn’t “throw a lot of money” at publicizing the debut novel. Fisher said the publishers have seemed surprised at how well the book has done, despite the lack of a high profile marketing campaign.

In addition to the critical praise, the book has just been named Best Fiction of the Year by the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association.

Although the book treads a thin line between poetry and prose, Fisher confesses she doesn’t write poetry.

“I was always afraid of it,” she said.

So how does she explain her unusual literary style? Through music.

After moving to Lopez Island she began playing music from Zimbabwe with a marimba group.

“It transformed me somehow,” she said. “It changed my DNA — it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.”

She explained that the music was not composed, but was channeled to the original African musicians by a divine conduit.

“I thought, if I could be a conduit I would be able to write the book I was meant to write. It’s a lot about rhythm, letting the words choose themselves and stepping out of it (as the writer),” she said.

The result is a book that is not an easy read, but one that is well worth the effort.

Fisher is working on a screenplay of the story, and a paperback edition is expected out this summer.

Karen Fisher reads from “A Sudden Country” 7:30 p.m. Jan. 12 at Eagle Harbor Books, 157 Winslow Way E, Bainbridge Island. wu