Charles Frazier's book takes you from the lush western landscapes of Wyoming to the Pacific Northwest and the swamps of Florida in this depression era story. At the heart of the story are 4 characters, Val, a WPA painter that is hired to paint a mural on the side of a post office in rural Wyoming, John, a wealthy rancher with political ambitions, Eve, his young wife who is a former band singer and Faro, the hired hand that knows everything going on at the ranch. Eve runs off and John pays Val to search for her. As the book unfolds, you learn everyone's backstory.

The book is a captivating and at times, fast paced story that will give you a sense of life during the depression. The book is predominately told from Val's perspective. The author's ability to describe a place so you can easily visualize it is extraordinary. You can smell the smells. See the colors. He is a master. The book's sole weakness is in the character development. But that does not distract from the story or the sense of place. It is a wonderful road trip.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for this advanced reader's copy.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ecco for providing me a digital copy of The Trackers in exchange for an honest review! I’m so glad I had the opportunity to read it; The Trackers is a thoughtful, artfully-written novel that I’m sure will stick with me.

The technical craft of this book is genuinely artisanal. Frazier’s prose is painstakingly detailed and vivid without ever crossing into overwhelming, which is perfect for this book’s various settings and historical context. The writing conveys the looming presence of the Great Depression over every event in the novel; the main character Val’s observations of great natural beauty, of which there are many, are colorful and majestic and even rustic at points but always underscored with wistful, restless longing for better times in language and syntax alike. History feels less like a distant recollection of the past and more like physical immersion into real life events in this novel, and it is sobering to read. The writing style of The Trackers paints its narrative, settings, themes, and characters-- literally, at times-- with authenticity and depth that gives the novel real weight.

Val, a painter, serves as the voice of The Trackers, and his perception of and relationships with the other characters of this book are its driving narrative force. The aforementioned outstandingly detailed writing style in this book matches Val’s painterly observant, introspective nature quite well: his narration, even when it dips into larger-scale political or philosophical pondering, never feels contrived, rather more like the genuine wandering of an insightful, perceptive mind. His jobs and drive to do them, which set up the plot of The Trackers, is interesting narratively and also historically, so following him as the lead character is interesting in turn.

The rest of the main cast of the novel is similarly authentic-feeling; each person is distinct and complex, the relationships among them complicated but utterly real. Every character is more than they seem, and all their dialogues are distinctly-voiced and as engaging as any real conversation could hope to be. Mysterious last-century cowboy Faro is my favorite, but Eve and Long stand out in their own right as well. I particularly enjoyed Eve’s massive sway over the story and her agency in her actions; often, with plots like this book has, characters like Eve fall into sexist narrative tropes more than act as their own people, but I felt that Eve’s character was a driving force of this novel all on her own. Long’s obsession with bringing her back to Dawes is not free of narrative judgment, either; I much appreciated the discerning perspective Val, Faro, Eve, and the novel itself seemed to take on the story’s events, addressing the thematic implications of the narrative with sensible moral context. The actual plot of the novel is paced such that, despite pages of extensive, fascinating dialogues and conversations to root the audience in its setting, only baseline familiarity is established with the characters before it picks up in intensity, so that their deeper intentions and histories unfold as the narrative does-- and learning more about each of them to piece together full-fledged portraits of who they are is compelling and satisfying at once.

The convergence of such intricate characters and artful writing in The Trackers is definitely the novel’s main draw; I will say that I struggled a bit to connect with the happenings of the plot as the book went on, but the characters and prose kept me interested, which in a literary work like this is standard enough but still much appreciated. In regards to the narrative, even if I couldn’t relate to its actual events-- I didn’t enjoy the faint romance aspects, for one-- I was enthralled by something else going on in each section. The richness of the settings of the book, from Dawes to Hooverville to Florida and onwards, is engaging. The mood and atmosphere the book creates, whether of tension or glory or bleakness, is always palpable. The history the book incorporates is genuinely fascinating. And the large-scale themes the book covers are all interesting facets of the human condition to consider. There is so much intricacy in The Trackers to engage with.

Ultimately, I really enjoyed The Trackers. Its authenticity in characters and historical context is compelling, and the immersive, rich craft of its writing is phenomenal. This book makes a point to follow its themes through to the end, questioning where intention and action meet to make a person and how the past should or should not define someone-- how hidden truths reveal less about someone than the lived impact of their actions, and all the different forms that impact can take, as well as what it means to really know a person. The Trackers is an exploration of Depression-era humanity, but its themes are truly evergreen.

Charles Frazier can combine hard times, questions about humanity, and complex characters to come up with a compelling story better than almost any author out there. The Trackers is a story that combines a WPA post office mural painter, a girl who was pushed out of her home to make a life riding the rails, a hardened cowboy, and a rich ranch owner longing to be a politician and mixes it with the Depression, Wyoming, San Francisco and coastal California, and the swamps of Florida. Frazier combines pathos, longing, disappointment, hard earned wisdom, hope, and beautiful descriptions of land and people to bring a novel that will keep readers satisfied to the end.

The Trackers is the first book I’ve read by Charles Frazier, but it definitely won’t be my last. Frazier tells the story of Val, a WPA artist who is sent to rural Wyoming to paint a mural in the local post office. The local millionaire rancher, John Long, and his wife, Eve, offer him accommodations for the length of his stay. There he meets Faro, a weathered ranch hand with a mysterious past. We get to know these four characters as the story unfolds into an adventure, a love story, and a depiction of the depression-era American West. I loved the quiet but evocative writing, reminiscent of John Steinbeck. A great read! I recommend.

I liked this the best of all of Frazier's novels. Set in the American West in the 1930s, the setting and characters and artwork --all of it--are beautifully created and described, When the local major landowner's wife leaves unexpectedly, an East Coast artist in town to paint a mural, heads out to find her. Her reason for leaving, and the timing of it, is one rarely portrayed with such sympathy from men, and Frazier handles it all deftly and well. While this will be heralded as lit fiction, where a book more focused on the woman's experience and thoughts would be shunted off into "women's fiction," it's a solid novel about White men and their power, and how damaging and deadly that power can be.

Charles Frazer, author of Cold Mountain, does it again, telling a masterfully epic story with this new Depression Era classic, The Trackers has larger than life characters woven into the context of American settings. Rumours and intrigue will send you traveling from San Francisco Hoovervilles, swampy Florida hideouts, and back to the main setting of a mural artist's wall canvas in a small town Wyoming post office. Frazer's tale includes past life experiences with WWI snipers, rail riders, radio musicians, cowboys, wealthy industrialists, drug runners, and politicians. As in Cold Mountain, Frazer brings in fresh modern connections to the characters, whose life issues are surprisingly similar to ours. I did not want this story to end. Hoping for a movie.
Publish date April 2023

It's been a long time since there was a new Charles Frazier novel and reading this new onr reminded me of why I liked Cold Mountain so much. There are descriptions of light, of weather, of colors, of people's skins, of smells and food and wine. All these create the atmosphere around an unusual story that will leave you thinking about what you have just read. And isn't that the best kind of writing?

Valentine is a 26-year-old painter, son of a wealthy man who committed suicide after the '29 crash. He has landed a job through a family connection to paint a WPA funded mural in Dawes County Wyoming. He has caught the eye of the local wealthy rancher, Joh Long, who has his eye on a political office of either Governor or Senator. Long invites him to live at the ranch, rather than in town, and Valentine accepts.

It is there, at Long Shot ranch, that he meets the cowboys who work there, an elderly former sheriff who is a horse whisperer, and the beautify younger wife of the rancher. The story moves along swiftly as he begins painting his mural. Just when I prepared for a love triangle or other complication of plot, Eve, the young wife, disappears and John Long asks Valentine to find her and to possible bring her back along with a small impressionist painting she took.

Surprisingly, the novel becomes wildly different from expectations. It leads Val to crisscrossing the country from Wyoming to Seattle to Florida and to San Francisco. Along the way, it becomes a mystery and an adventure. There is history of the depression and many oddball and violent characters. Frazier hasn't lost any of his style and it's good to see him back.

Thanks to Harper Collings and NetGalley for the download of this pre-publication proof.

An interesting story set in the depression. I did find it sad though. Characters well written and the plot complex b

Great historical fiction following WPA muralist Val to Wyoming. He gets involved in the drama between a wealthy rancher and his wife. Eve disappears and Val is hired to track her down. Good drama with action and suspense. The methods of WPA muralists to create murals is discussed and will be of interest - art plays a major role in this suspenseful drama. Recommended. Would be a good choice for book clubs as the historical fiction selection.

The Trackers draws us in with the promise of descriptions of a unique period in American history. It’s the end of the Great Depression and the height of the New Deal era, and our protagonist, Val Welch, comes to a remote Wyoming town as an employee of the Federal Art Project to paint a mural in the town’s post office. He interacts with several residents who defy stereotype- a rancher with a world class art collection; his wife, a former singer in a cowboy band; and the postman himself who bristles at any suggestion that he might not be as sophisticated as a college educated artist. Just when Val (and the reader) seems to be settling in, the rancher’s wife runs off and the rancher asks Val to search for her. This is where the book starts to take a bit of a left turn for me. Frazier sets Val up from the beginning as more of an observer than a catalyst for the story, so we are never sure what drives him to leave his mural job and set out on a goose chase that ultimately takes him around the country from Florida to San Francisco. As Val’s search proceeds, the interesting descriptions of the lives of the people he meets and the places he visit start to take second place to a more sordid story of the wife’s previous life. This includes (minor spoiler) a few violent scenes that seem out of place with what has come before..

So, I finished the book with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the story as it progressed became less and less satisfying, especially given the main character’s emotional distance. On the other, I continued throughout the book to come upon writing of such beauty that it left me breathless. So my recommendation is qualified, but it’s one I think Frazier’s fans will understand and appreciate.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Eve is forced out of the house in her teens when her family has too many mouths to feed and no money during the depression.

She learned to survive in the camps and rode the rails from place to place to find work. She picked fruit until she met Mr. Long. They were soon married but she still sang in local honky-tonks and was admired by many.

Valentine Montgomery Welsh is hired to paint a mural in the local post office. He is introduced to the Longs and offered free rent in one of their ranch-hand cottages. Everything is going well and the mural is nearly finished when the straw boss of the ranch corners Val and asks him where Eve is. Thus follows the major adventure of the book.

Val covers all four corners of the state looking for Eve to bring her home. The country is fairly lawless during the thirties and tracking a runaway is fraught with danger. Some people are happy to help Val in his search, while others would just as soon dispatch him. One of these characters is Faro who is very big and very mean. He and Val attain a truce, however, while they scour the country for the missing Mrs. Eve Long.

This story is entertaining and irresistible! I was engaged both by the plot and also the ruthlessly depicted characters. Enjoy! 5 stars – CE Williams

Another stand put novel by the author of Cold Mountain. The setting during the depression is bleak but both the characters and plot are rich in language, description, and tell the myriad stories of those struggling to make it during hard times. A wonderful read.

WPA painter, Val Welch, heads West for an enviable New Deal commission in small town Dawes, Wyoming. His remit: to paint a mural in the town Post Office that represents the region. His chosen topic: “The Energy of America or the natural and human history of this place.” He is offered free lodgings at the ranch of the wealthy John Long and his wife, Eve, a former honky tonk singer with her own troubled past. Faro, a rather iconic tough cowboy (and complete horse whisperer) is one of those mysterious characters who draws you in against your conscious inclination.

When Eve runs off, Val takes a break from painting to moonlight as a tracker, criss-crossing the Depression riddled country in search of her. It’s a rich narrative, teeming with individual stories and told from a young (and somewhat embittered) painter’s eye. His search takes him from Wyoming to Seattle to San Francisco to Florida — each location suffering from the Depression in its own Hellish way. Each character — from the four leads to the many supporting — is both an individual and an obvious product of his or her history in these troubled times. We are treated to Val’s narrative commentary on the way, ranging from his own hopes and desires to his surprises to his inner rantings on subjects of government, greed, and some (previously unknown to me) dispiriting Supreme Court Decisions.

The deep dives (scattered throughout the story) on how the mural was conceived and executed were engrossing. It was to be done in “roughly the ancient way” and I enjoyed learning about how to make, tint, and use tempera paint, build scaffolding, and simply look at the world in a different (artistic) way.
The story is bold, expansive, and yet also intricately detailed. Excellent writing — see some of my favorite quotes below. I liked the balance between action and introspection, and I loved the description of the physical surroundings integrated with internal landscape of Val’s thoughts.

Highly recommended.

Some great quotes:
“Looking now, the missing element — and it was down in a deep crater — was the violence of the West. Not so much the physical geography, but the violence inherent in the concept of the West, the politically and culturally and religiously ordained rapacity smearing blood all over the fresh beauty.”

“Traveling the country, town by town, I felt a heady drift of grief and sometimes a breakthrough of optimism from the long Depression.”

“So the mural’s main argument, however it was shaped, was that this particular place held importance and was not forgotten after all.”

“The look seemed inhuman until I realized that just because I might never have felt or thought whatever passed through Faro’s mind and body in that flicker of time did not mean it wasn’t human.”

“Which struck me, a childless man with the first number in his age still two, as a better position on childrearing if you meant it metaphorically and if the floor wasn’t rock-hard hexagonal tile laid over a slab of concrete.”

“The higher the elevation, the more I felt like I was being rendered transparent by X-rays or gamma rays or whatever.”

“After all, the ultimate expression of Capitalism is not democracy. It’s a dictatorship not of individual men but of corporations with interchangeable leaders. I wasn’t sure if the Depression was straining the structural limits of our Constitution or simply revealing that its fundamental idea were faulty.”

“After Florida — a state equivalent to a hotel towel from somebody else’s bath flung sopping across your face — Wyoming felt clean and brittle, the light fragile as a flake of mica, the high air rare enough to be measured in the lungs and appreciated in its thinness, it’s lack of substance.”

I enjoyed this novel while I was in it - good prose and world building. The plot was a little predictable - I felt like I was there rolling my eyes with the female character because the men were being clueless. I haven't read any Charles Frazier before though and this inclined me to go back to his previous work.

The Trackers is the most recent novel from veteran historical fiction writer, Charles Frazier. This New Deal-era story is narrated by Val Welch, a New England artist who has landed a WPA position painting a mural in the post office serving a tiny Wyoming town. John Long, a local rancher, art enthusiast, and supporter of public art offers up his home as lodging for Val. As Val gets to know his benefactor, Long’s political aspirations come more into focus, juxtaposed against his wife’s hard-scrabble, hobo, traveling stage performer past. When Long’s wife, Eve, leaves, taking an original Renoir from the ranch’s collection, Val is recruited by the wealthy rancher to track her whereabouts. His search for Eve leads Val on a transcontinental journey that crosses the paths of a colorful cast of Americans, all subsisting through the lingering impacts of the depression.

Frazier’s fifth novel leaps quickly into the story, spending only the minimum time necessary on backstory and character introduction. Rapid leaps forward continue throughout, which can feel jarring, but they consistently settle into vignettes that are relevant, add context, and reveal characters and their backgrounds in interesting ways, as demonstrated during an anxious evening Val spends in a particularly lawless Florida swamp.

The Trackers is a book bursting at the seams with weighty social themes, most of which are woven seamlessly into the story. Life for women in post-WWI U.S. and the immigrant experience factor into the lives of a few characters. One constant element, unsurprising in a depression-era book, is wealth disparity. Not all geographies and not all citizen demographics were impacted equally by the economic crash, and these different experiences are contrasted in Val’s own experience, his complicated relationship with his wealthy benefactor and in his search for Eve, which features nights in luxury accommodations and days among the homeless, squatters, and rural poor.

If any other theme overtakes wealth inequity, it is the public good, specifically in the form of tax-payer funded public initiatives. Val shares in some detail the mission of his PO mural as described by his friend Hutch, who lined up the project for him, “Hutch was the right kind of idealist for the times. He believed public art could be like a pebble thrown into a still pond, a small influence but spreading in all directions.” Frazier does not allow this rosy ideal to stand unchallenged and it’s clear from the lived experience and in some cases the direct criticism of the novels grittier characters, that Hutch’s bright idealism is far from practical reality. Reading about this time period in American history, when New Deal programs represented a fundamental hope for a better future, during a present reality in which it often feels the only measure of value or accomplishment is profit or accumulated wealth feels defeating. Art for the sake of elevating the daily lives of ordinary people seems a faint whisper, while voices calling for privatization and economic austerity for the already austere are amplified. The Trackers serves, in part, as a reminder that at one time the political will to improve the lives of all Americans did exist, if imperfectly.

The Trackers is a fast-paced book of exploration and discovery, shot through with an interesting cast of characters. Whether you seek to enjoy the book for it’s historical storytelling or for it’s modern political parallels, you’ll find what you’re looking for. This book is worth your time and I recommend picking up a copy in April 2023 when it is scheduled for release to the public.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for the digital advance reader copy of The Trackers.

It is 1936 and Valentine Welch is a new art school graduate. Once part of a well to do family, his father has comitted suicide leaving Val at the tender mercies of his rapacious brothers. His art school mentor has come to the rescue by securing Val a WPA job painting a mural at a Wyoming post office. To top it off, he will be housed with wealthy rancher John Long, the project's sponsor, and his wife Eve. Faro, a tough,mysterious older cowboy, runs the ranch and otherwise does Long's bidding. Eve is a former hobo and singer, used by Long to help launch a political career by being his arm candy. Soon on in the book, Eve takes off and Long, for a variety of reasons, sets Val on her trail.

The story moves forward at good clip but there are no great surprises in the plot. This is a story of a young man's odyssey in 1937 America, the height of the Great Depression. I use the word odyssey puposely. Val has embarked in pursuit of a sort of Helen of Troy to fetch her back to a home to which she may not want to return. He is challenged physically and morally on his journey. Truth in this world is malleable and no one is what they initially seem to be

Frazier does a wonderful job setting the the scenes in which the action takes place. I wanted to linger over his detailed descriptions of such different places as Wyoming, Seattle, Florida and San Francisco. He draws a picture of depression era America with unfailing accuracy: thousands of young people forced to ride the rails because their families could no longer afford to feed them, former professionals living in "Hoovervilles", people everywhere not having enough to survive. Resting over every scene is a sense of danger, these characters live in a primal world, without order or rules. I am very grateful to Ecco and Netgalley for giving me this ARC in return for an honest review. I confess I am behind a little on my usual pace because I enjoyed this book so much I didn't want it to end.

Thank you to Net Galley for an early copy of The Trackers

Charles Frazier once again proves it is all about the journey, not the destination (Cold Mountain, Varina). This Depression-Era story features strong central characters whose interactions lead to disillusionment and danger.
Valentine Welch is a young man employed by the WPA and sent to small-town Dawes, Wyoming to create a mural in the local post office as part of the movement to support the arts during the Depression. Val secures lodgings at the Long Shot ranch because Long the owner is an acquaintance of Val's boss in the WPA. Long and his wife Eve invite Eve to their main house for dinner and a kind of friendship develops. When Eve deserts the ranch, Long asks Val to head out in search of her with indications that she may be headed to the Seattle area. Because the mural in the post office is nearly finished and Long knows Val's boss, he is given permission to take time off for this venture.
Val's search for Eve will take him to Seattle, to Florida (do not miss Frazier's very descriptive passage of flying in an airplane in the 1930s) and the San Francisco Bay area. Throughout his travels, readers will enjoy the splendor of the landscapes Val encounters and his introspective feelings about his quest.
Readers will note that while this book heavily relies on dialog, there are no quotation marks in the text. It is still easy to ascertain who is speaking. The absence of quotation marks gives more of a stream of consciousness feeling to the narrative which adds to the movement of the book.
Charles Frazier once again places his reader directly into the world he has created and does not let go even on the final page of the story.

Charles Frazier has written another beautifully written emotionally moving novel.Set in the Great Depression he brings the time the characters alive .Charles Frazier is a modern master of historical fiction.#netgalley #ecco

3-4 stars. Although well plotted and full of interesting sentences, the overall sadness of the story was disappointing. I suppose a book set in the years trailing America's great depression should have warned me that there would be plenty of unhappiness to counterbalance the youngest character's naive optimism. Frazier crafted several interesting characters, one quite complex one (Eve), and my favorite - no BS tolerated, Faro. In counterpoint, there were a good handfull of quite selfish and cruel characters too. My favorite part? The ending/last chapter with the fountain pen. Bully for Val. That was a month he would never forget.

So many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this new book by Charles Frazier. I am normally a non-fiction reader but could not resist this one. I have read the author's other works and thought very highly of the story-telling. This one was so good. I have been buried in American History for my last several books so I needed a break. This is one you will need a rainy weekend to start and finish. The story is set in the Great Depression with an artist paid to create a mural for the post office. We had one of the New Deal Artists murals in my hometown post office so the story pulled me in. It was a very enjoyable ride and you will not want to set it down. Highly recommended!