About the Author

KATE WHEELER was named a "Best Young American Novelist" by Granta. Raised in South America, her debut collection, Not Where I Started From, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book. She is the recipient of a Whiting Award, an NEA fellowship, and a Guggenheim fellowship.

Reviews

"As fine as [NOT WHERE I STARTED FROM] was, however, it's clear now that it was a mere warmup for her remarkable first novel, ''When Mountains Walked.'' First novels are often damned with faint praise - arguably, the term itself is a polite way of saying an author's not half-bad for a beginner - but there is nothing apprentice-like in this fine and accomplished book." Boston Globe "Kate Wheeler comes to the publication of her first novel with a fistful of prizes, glowing reviews for her short fiction (collected in Not Where I started From) and a reputation as a fine travel writer. When Mountains Walked showcases both sides of her talent. Though the Rosario River Valley is fictitious, Wheeler gives it concrete form...The background to the action is all very clear, observed by a writer who has trained as a traveler...You can see everything as if in a photograph. But When Mountains Walked is also a real novel, almost an old-fashioned one. It has plot and character, a climax, a denouement -- all assembled by a creator with a sure hand." The New York Times "The kind of novel you gulp down, curious to find out what happens next . . . A real novel, almost an old-fashioned one. It has plot and character, a climax, a denouement -- all assembled by a creator with a sure hand." The Washington Post "In WHEN MOUNTAINS WALKED two women joined by blood but separated by chronology follow their men, with love in mind, into two very different cultures. They find love, but not how or where the expected it, as they are tossed between idealism, hidden tenderness, lust, loyalty, and discovery. Rich details and a lyrical language make their physical and inner voyages at once restrained and intensely powerful."--Elena Castedo, author of PARADISE "Kate Wheeler's WHEN MOUNTAINS WALKED again demonstrates her felicity of language, insight, and control. Ever since the early stories in NOT WHERE I STARTED FROM, Ms. Wheeler has been our best observer of the American condition transplanted and adrift in unfamiliar traditional societies." -- Robert Stone "Kate Wheeler's descriptions and intuitions are quite wonderful-- she writes very well in indeed." --Peter Matthiessen "...takes readers on a series of journeys -- into a Peruvian canyon, the desert of India and...into the hearts of two restless women...The strength of this book lies in Ms. Wheeler's lyrical use of language. She has a gift for tangible, descriptive writing..."When Mountains Walked" subtly questions how much is too much to sacrifice in a relationship. It is a deftly written debut by a gifted storyteller." The Wall Street Journal "WHEN MOUNTAINS WALKED is a remarkably passionate and engaging novel and a glimmering showcase for this young writer's gifts." The San Francisco Chronicle "Her first novel, WHEN MOUNTAINS WALKED, is a triumph in every way -- as enthralling story, vivid evocation of faraway places, deft portraiture and sharply observed social criticism...Wheeler's parallel narrative, in alternating chapters, tells the story of Johnny and Althea in Peru and India. This strategy richens our perspective on women's struggles for self-assertion in different eras. They are, the author implies, not so different as we like to think...In her ability to endow a fast-paced story with moral and political depth, Wheeler already displays mastery in the Graham Greene-Robert Stone tradition...In tightly focused yet metaphor-laden prose, this superb novel sets the mountains in motion -- shaking up relations between sexes, generations, and rich nations and poor. It's up to Kate Wheeler to deal with the aftershocks of literary acclaim." Newsday --

Eagerly awaited since Wheeler's debut short story collection, Not Where I Started From, this atmospheric, insightful and suspenseful first novel confirms the ambitious range and depth of her literary skill. The narrative intertwines the story of two women struggling to define themselves in the vortex of overbearing men. Assigned to Peru as health care workers, Maggie Goodwin and her husband, Carson, find themselves in Piedras, a remote, primitive village set in a deep river canyon, not far from where, 60 years earlier, Maggie's grandmother, Althea, and her husband, seismologist Johnny Baines, suffered the tragedy of their baby son's death. In alternating accounts, Wheeler depicts both women's lives, each of them suffocating in the shadow of a domineering, ambitious husband and facing wrenching dilemmas concerning the father of the babies they have conceived. If these mirror-imaged lives seem too conveniently symmetrical, Wheeler adroitly emphasizes their differences as well. Now 79 and dying, Althea made a momentous decision in India, and preserved her marriage at the expense of truth. Maggie wants to emulate her grandmother's adventurous life, but knows Althea is emotionally dislocated from her true identity. Smoldering against Carson's chauvinistic behavior, Maggie is drawn to Comandante Oquendo, aka Vicente Quispe Cruz, the benevolent leader of a failed terrorist group called Black Rainbow, now in hiding from the Peruvian military, whose dealings in the cocaine trade brought fleeting semiprosperity to Piedras and fostered democratic cooperation among its citizens. When Carson discovers that the Canadian owners of a privatized gold mine in the hills above the village have callously poisoned the district water supply with toxic effluents, causing malformed babies and serious health problems among the peasant populace, he and Maggie enlist Vicente's support. Vicente exhibits the bravery and intelligence of a natural leader, and his innate idealism stands in contrast to Carson's stubborn self -importance. It is inevitable that Vicente and Maggie become lovers, and that her naivete about their future together will lead to a crisis culminating in Maggie's transformation from an easily cowed marital subordinate to a courageous, morally sure woman. Maggie's epiphany occurs when, alone and hiding from soldiers in the forest, she finally understands the nature of selfhood and of commitment, and determines the direction of the rest of her life. Wheeler's descriptions of the interior of Peru are both lush and graphic, conveying the "pulsing, vivid heat'' in sensuous terms, the abject poverty of the villages as well as the harsh beauty of the landscape. Ably articulating the themes of a woman's role as wife and mother in a patriarchal society, and the political realities that occur when relentless economic deprivation victimizes people in Third World cultures, she has written a psychologically lucid and emotionally resonant novel. Agent, Denise Shannon. 3-city author tour. (Feb.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.