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West and The Redemption of Galen Pike
- Narrated by: Jilly Bond, Kris Dyer, Robert G. Slade
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
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Summary
For the first time in audio, a collection of Carys Davies’ iconic novel West and her award-winning short story collection The Redemption of Galen Pike.
West
Cy Bellman, American settler and widowed father of Bess, reads in the newspaper that huge ancient bones have been discovered in a Kentucky swamp. He leaves his small Pennsylvania farm and young daughter to find out if the rumours are true: that the giant monsters are still alive and roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River.
West is the story of Bellman's journey and of Bess, waiting at home for her father to return. Written with compassionate tenderness and magical thinking, it explores the courage of conviction, the transformative power of grief, the desire for knowledge and the pull of home, from an exceptionally talented and original British writer. It is a radiant and timeless epic-in-miniature, an eerie, electric monument to possibility.
The Redemption of Galen Pike
In a remote Australian settlement a young wife with an untellable secret reluctantly invites her neighbour into her home. A Quaker spinster offers companionship to a condemned man in a Colorado jail. In the ice and snows of Siberia an office employee from Birmingham witnesses a scene that will change her life. At a jubilee celebration in a northern English town a middle-aged alderman opens his heart to Queen Victoria. A teenage daughter leaves home in search of adventure. High in the Cumbrian fells a woman seeks help from her father’s enemy.
Spare, precise, charged with a prickly wit, the stories in Carys Davies' sparkling second collection remind us how little we know of the lives of others.
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What listeners say about West and The Redemption of Galen Pike
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Jamie
- 22-04-23
Beautifully written and very satisfying
'West' is a wonderfully engaging story about an ordinary man who rides off into the unmapped west of America in search of the dinosaurs whose fossilized bones have recently been discovered, and the family he has left behind. The language used and the way in which we see the events unfold for each character are perfectly realized. The Redemption of Galen Pike is equally moving and well written, each of these short stories having a very good twist!
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Performance
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Story
- tracy allen
- 29-07-19
Poignant beautifully constructed short stories
I particularly liked ‘West’ - an epic tale in miniature about a man following Lewis and Clark west in search of great beasts. He is accompanied by a Native American called ‘Old Woman from a Distance’ and the name sums up everything that’s good about these stories - sad, funny and surprising.