Heroes of the Frontier

By: Dave Eggers

Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman

“A picaresque adventure and spiritual coming-of-age tale — On the Road crossed with Henderson the Rain King… Deeply affecting.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Longlisted for an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

A captivating, often hilarious novel of family and wilderness from the bestselling author of The Circle, this is a powerful examination of our contemporary life and a rousing story of adventure.

Josie and her children’s father have split up, she’s been sued by a former patient and lost her dental practice, and she’s grieving the death of a young man senselessly killed. When her ex asks to take the children to meet his new fiancée’s family, Josie makes a run for it, figuring Alaska is about as far as she can get without a passport. Josie and her kids, Paul and Ana, rent a rattling old RV named the Chateau, and at first their trip feels like a vacation: They see bears and bison, they eat hot dogs cooked on a bonfire, and they spend nights parked along icy cold rivers in dark forests. But as they drive, pushed north by the ubiquitous wildfires, Josie is chased by enemies both real and imagined, past mistakes pursuing her tiny family, even to the very edge of civilization.

A tremendous new novel from the best-selling author of The Circle, Heroes of the Frontier is the darkly comic story of a mother and her two young children on a journey through an Alaskan wilderness plagued by wildfires and a uniquely American madness.

Critic reviews

“Among his bestselling literary fiction peers, Dave Eggers alone is engaged in a sustained effort to write about contemporary America. He’s been going at it so regularly, and so swiftly, that he’s keeping pace with the times, if not getting a half-step ahead… When Eggers draws the present into his fiction, it’s there not just as window dressing or setting; it tells us something about ourselves… Heroes gives us a woman who’s at the end of her rope, in a place of salvation without the wherewithal to seek it, as its promise goes up in flames.”
—Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times

“This is a novel about America, about what forces people to leave ‘the lower 48’ to seek refuge in a forbidding, unpeopled landscape… Eggers renders it with such passion and good humour, and describes the ‘land of mountains and light’ in such stirring, lustrous prose… There is a feeling of utopianism about the novel, a sense that, in Alaska, some original American dream slumbers just beneath the ice… Heroes of the Frontier acts on the reader like a breath of Alaskan air, cleansing the spirit and lifting the heart.”
—Alex Preston, The Guardian (U.K)

“The phenomenally productive Eggers has talent to spare… In his books he has revealed a remarkable aptitude for inhabiting otherness and illuminating the world’s darker corners… Heroes of the Frontier again offers complex, believable characters… Entertains, often spectacularly.”
—Barbara Kingsolver, The New York Times Book Review

“Captivating…. Part adventure, part social critique, the book is occasionally harrowing and often very funny… As Eggers takes Josie through wildfires, avalanches, lightning strikes and narrow escapes from the long arm of the law, he suggests there's something a little heroic in all of us.” —Georgia Rowe, San Jose Mercury News

“Eggers, writing with exuberant imagination, incandescent precision, and breathless propulsion, casts divining light on human folly and generosity and the glories and terror of nature. This uproarious quest, this breathless journey from lost to found, this delirious American road-trip saga, is fueled by uncanny insight, revolutionary humor, and profound pleasure in the absurd and the sublime.”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist (Starred Review)

Good premise, slight miss in execution

The story was good, pacing was a little off. The audition narration was excellent and kept me interested.

adventurous , transporting and thought provoking.

I caught myself feeling all of the colors being described. From the shocking red of Anna's hair and Paul's ice blue eyes to the many colors of their mother's soul during their adventure, and enjoyed the possibilities suggested by this.

Where is my resolution?

The best way to describe this book is with the word unresolved. It is beautifully written and wonderfully conceived, but nothing gets resolved. The protagonist is left with no resolution regarding her sister, the power company lawsuit, where she is headed, or her feelings of guilt regarding the death of Jesse.

She feels shame about enjoying sex, for having been caught in that act by her son. She is ashamed of not being the perfect parent or knowing the right decisions to make. She is a bundle of nerves and emotions she hasn't even begun to investigate. While I don't expect a happy ending, how about ending where the story naturally ends not in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no resolution to any problem or question that has arisen.

Kudos on being a writer that can express emotion and convey meaning through setting and dialogue. Honestly I found Josie, Paul and Ana beautiful and individual and wonderful unto themselves. However I damn you for not finding the ending this story deserved.

I am an Eggers fan

To the extent that I was able to get that this is a comedy and to the extent that I could amuse myself by comparing Josie, Paul and Ana to, say, Lewis and Clark, I enjoyed it. And the performance was extraordinary. However, I never had an ounce of like for Josie and could barely tolerate one more minute of her hairbrained and narcissistic schemes. Moreover, though she would consistently make 25 terrible decisions in a row, in the next moment, she'd know in her bones exactly the right thing to do. Absolutely self-deceived, a risk-to-life-and-limb threat to self and children and, as I said, unlikable, I wouldn't follow her anywhere.

The Hallelujah quality of the ending was also amusing--Josie was always winding herself up for heaps of self-appreciation.

Heros of the Frontier

a very entertaining story, some great human insights. word word word word word word word.