Buy used: $31.99

FREE delivery October 13 - 18. Details

Select delivery location

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Better World Books: West

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Sick Heart River Hardcover – January 1, 1941

by John Buchan (Author)

4.3 92 ratings

Book 5 of 5: Sir Edward Leithen Series

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$4.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$5.95

$7.95 with discounted Audible membership

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

$9.95

Hardcover, January 1, 1941

$31.99

—

$26.00

Paperback

"Please retry"

$11.95

$9.41

$3.66

Audio, Cassette, Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$69.95

—

Kindle
$4.99 Read with our Free App
Audiobook
$5.95 $5.95 with discounted Audible membership
Hardcover
$31.99

6 Used from $26.00 1 Collectible from $40.00
Paperback
$11.95

16 Used from $3.66 13 New from $9.41
Audio, Cassette
$69.95

1 New from $69.95

Sick Heart River

Book 5 of 5

Sir Edward Leithen Series
Print length

318 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Hodder and Stoughton
Publication date

January 1, 1941
See all details

John Buchan
89
Paperback
36 offers from $3.41
John Buchan
123
Paperback
31 offers from $3.13
John Buchan
183
Paperback
28 offers from $4.59
John Buchan
42
Mass Market Paperback
32 offers from $7.27
John Buchan
27
Mass Market Paperback
24 offers from $3.66

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0006EUB6S
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hodder and Stoughton; First Edition (January 1, 1941)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 318 pages
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces

Best Sellers Rank: #10,549,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #119,637 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction

Customer Reviews:
4.3 92 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

Important information

To report an issue with this product, click here.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

92 global ratings

5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

C. O. Blum

Buchan's Best

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

This novel deserves to be counted among the classics. It is a riveting story of a journey into the wilderness that is also a journey to the depths of the soul and to God.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Wickm

Superb Literature

Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2017

Verified Purchase

Buchan was pet author for years & highly recommended to students
by my mentor sister who was heroic in the WAVEs
during WWII!

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Lee Kam Lai

Good book

Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2008

Verified Purchase

The story is captivating, good description of a man's soul searching, and being in peace with God and nature.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Mike Reho

Philosophy the cold way

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2000

I recently read this book for a report in my English class. I usually never read anything outside of Sci-fi, fantasy, or well known classics. Although the first 30 or so pages I had trouble staying awake, it changed quickly into a book I couldn't put down. There are some great characters in this book, and Buchan leaves the reader (listener) on your toes a lot. This book had a great deal of philosophy in it, and though it took me some time to appreciate it, eventually I found that this book has a very deep meaning to it. Sick Heart River may only be available in tape-form now, but it is the same story that I read. Sick Heart River has more twists and turns in the plot than some sci-fi I've read. I hope that you enjoy this book as much as I did. The way of ending the book is also VERY original. Other than this book's slow start up, I enjoyed every page. Kudos to Buchan, a wonderful written book!

14 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

WhatCathyReadNext

Elegaic, moving, uplifting - one of Buchan's finest novels

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 31, 2018

Verified Purchase

Sick Heart River was Buchan’s last novel. In fact, he finished it only a fortnight before his death and it was published posthumously. Although Buchan cannot have known his own death was so close, there is definitely an elegiac quality to the book. Whilst writing Sick Heart River, Buchan had been completing his autobiography, Memory Hold-the-Door. Perhaps the process of recalling the experiences of earlier days, the loss of old friends and taking stock contributed to the reflective, meditative sense the reader gets from Sick Heart River.

Diagnosed with tuberculosis, a legacy of his experiences in the First World War, and with no prospect of recovery, Sir Edward Leithen seeks a way to give purpose to the last few months of his life. When the task of finding Francis Galliard comes his way, via a mutual friend, initially he has no particular interest on a personal level in the object of his search. Leithen undertakes the task purely to prevent himself lapsing into self-pity or suffering the slow demise he fears. As he tells Galliard later: ‘I wasn’t interested in you – I didn’t want to do a kindness to anybody – I wanted something that would keep me on my feet until I died. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had never heard the name of any of the people concerned. I was thinking only of myself, and the job suited me.’

Buchan is always good at descriptions of landscape and in the book he captures the harsh beauty of northern Canada. However, he shows that what seems beautiful can also be deadly: ‘Leithen brooded over that mysterious thing, the North. A part of the globe which had no care for human life, which was not built to man’s scale, a remnant of that Ice Age which long ago had withered the earth.’ The reader witnesses Leithen’s desperate struggle to survive a Canadian winter alongside his companions – the Frizel brothers, Johnny and Lew, and their Hare Indian guides.

One of Buchan’s favourite texts, The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, makes an appearance in the book, as it did in Mr. Standfast. However, in this case, The Pilgrim’s Progress is not the benign instrument that assists Richard Hannay to achieve his mission, help him uncover mysteries and reveal insights, as it does in Mr Standfast. In Sick Heart River, it leads to a journey that risks the lives of Leithen and his companions. Lew Frizel, casting himself in the role of Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress, initially believes the Sick Heart River to be ‘the River of the Water of Life, same as in Revelation’ where all his sins will be washed away. However, Lew’s quest to find the Sick Heart River is shown to be a false pilgrimage, a chimera. The Sick Heart River is not, as he imagined, the equivalent of the Land of Beulah or a gateway to Heaven but, as he tells Leithen, ‘the Byroad-to Hell, same as in Bunyan’.

The book explores some familiar themes of Buchan’s novels: fortitude, self-sacrifice, the link between bodily and spiritual health, the spirit of place, and the importance of being in touch with and true to your roots. As Sick Heart River reaches its conclusion, the world has once more been plunged into the calamity of another war. Remembering his experiences in the First World War, Leithen reflects, ‘It had been waste, futile waste, and death, illimitable, futile death. Now the same devilment was unloosed again’. (One of Buchan’s final acts as Governor General of Canada had been to authorise Canada’s declaration of war against Germany in September 1939.)

At the end of Sick Heart River, in an act of epic self-sacrifice and knowing the likely outcome, Leithen takes command of a task that will prove to be his final battle. As always, the book’s ending leaves me slightly teary.

5 people found this helpful

K. Moss

Thoughtful, introspective, compelling

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 3, 2012

Verified Purchase

It seems that I am a bit of a 'late developer' in relation to Buchan's writings, having been content for far too long to remain with the 39 Steps as the benchmark for his oeuvre. This is a gruelling book by comparison, but a remarkable one.

The central character, Sir Edward Leithen, is dying, and ventures off on one last trip to the northern wilds of Canada, in order to save a man personally unknown to him, who is lost in the icy wilderness. So, from the outset, we are not presented with a happy ending, or the prospect of recovery. It is no coincidence that, at the time of writing, Buchan was living in Canada (he had become Governor-General in Ottawa) and presumably knew himself to be dying. Buchan died in 1940, and this book was not published until 1941, so we may reasonably presume that the author used the text to work out his own ideas as he approached the end - the reader will find that there is a great deal of internalisation, of self-critique and questioning on the part of Leithen as he struggles with his failing body. That this is played out against the brutal backdrop of the mountainous wilds in the middle of winter, simply adds a kind of raw power and strength to the narrative - Buchan is returning (if he ever left) to a biblical view of human nature: frail, flawed, at times so self-obsessed that we fail to see the real needs around us, yet at the same time magnificent, battling against a hostile environment.

This is a brilliant book. If Leithen is a device to present us with Buchan's own struggle with ebbing mortality, then he does not fall into the trap of idealising himself, of presenting a one-dimensional model of perfectibility. Leithen is a complex, uncertain, fragile individual who, in the end finds his own place, and comes to terms with God's sovereign rights over his own existence. It is impossible to determine what Buchan's own faith looked like - but we do see here a pronounced comprehension of a Judaeo-Christian worldview where human weakness produces works of great beauty and value - the theme of developing warmth and the bringing of life is played out against the backdrop of bleak, dead cold and nihilism. Leithen progressively and willingly surrenders his very self-controlled, ordered existence to a loving Creator in the midst an environment marked by chaos and death. Indeed, in effect, he gives his life vicariously.

So, 'Sick Heart River' works at several levels. It's a gripping adventure, but it is also much, much more. A fitting end to Buchan's prolific output, and a book I will no doubt come back to again.

6 people found this helpful

Gregory S. Buzwell

A Farewell to the Stage

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 12, 2012

Verified Purchase

Sick Heart River features one of Buchan's most likeable returning characters, Sir Edward Leithen: barrister, Member of Parliament and all round splendid chap. This time around however there is a macabre twist - as the book begins Leithen has just received some terrible news from his doctor, he is suffering from tuberculosis and only has, according to the best medical opinions available, about a year to live. The news throws Leithen into a period of morbid reflection - what has he done with his life? What should he do with the time that remains to him? Should he retire completely from public life and spend his final days in quiet reflection or is there time, and energy, for one last adventure? One last chance to do something significant and perhaps, in the process, make his peace with himself, and with God?

Salvation, of a sort, comes with the opportunity to find and bring home a missing man, Francis Galliard who - literally sick at heart - has disappeared without trace into the wild and beautiful Canadian Northwest landscape. Leithen sets out on one final adventure - one last, selfless deed of common humanity in the process of fulfilling which he knows he will come face-to-face with his own fear of mortality.

What follows is a quite remarkable novel. There are, as one would suspect with Buchan, scenes of action and adventure as well as some beautiful descriptions of snowy landscapes and mist-shrouded mountains, but there is also a brilliant prolonged set of reflections upon the human condition and what it means to live a 'good life' and how one should attempt to come to terms with Fate, God, Destiny (whatever your preferred term) as death approaches. Buchan himself was dying when he wrote his novel, and I suspect only someone facing the final curtain in such a direct and inescapable fashion could have written such a moving and intense novel weaved around the idea of death, atonement, purgatory and redemption.

Sick Heart River is not a bright and breezy read like The Thirty-Nine Steps but it is a remarkably intense, moving and reflective work. I've always thought Buchan was a fine and underrated writer, but here his usual gifts for action and description have been given an extra intensity by the profound and universal nature of his subject matter. It's a thrilling read, and an extremely moving one as we follow one man towards his own Calvary and a last chance at uncertain redemption.

11 people found this helpful

Michael Crate

A Must Read for Lovers of Canadian Literature

Reviewed in Canada on September 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

This is a book I have slowly read over the course of six months. It is a marvellous story of the unravelling of the "rebirth of a soul" of the protagonist, Sir Edward Leithen. Buchan brings to life the reality of life in Canada's North at the beginning of World War Two to show how the land can either destroy a man or renew a man. I'm the end, Leithen's renewal was not of physical strength but that of soul.

I absolutely loved this novel. It has become my favourite novel!

sara hicks

Hard read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2021

Verified Purchase

Hard read

See more reviews