Charles G. D. Roberts (1860–1943)

Three stars might be a bit generous for this one although it is an easy read not too boring. However it's very much stuck between two worlds.
It starts off moving through time in a very interesting manner, which seemed to involve transmigration of the souls. However once it gets to caveman times it stops and turns into more of a pulp adventure.
It gets so pulpy i thought at times it had inspired Howards' Conan tales but that was partly because i mistook the main heros name as Crom. The god of Conan, it isn't its Grom.. sorry i mean Grôm, because cavemen were very big into circumflexes. Anyway you can see why i might have thought it related to Conan when you have passages like this one.

"See," said Grôm, "I have made the bright Dancing Ones my servants. The tribe shall come here. And we shall be the masters of all things."
Once more the girl threw herself at his feet. He seemed to her a god. But remembering how she had twice saved his life, she laid her cheek against his knee. He lifted her into the hollow of his great arm, and she leaned against him, gazing up into his face, while he stood staring into the fire, his eyes clouded with visions.

However the books intent is obviously far more pointed and educational feeling. Even if its grasp of history is pretty terrible and it's plagued by the authors own sexist, racist and Manifest Destiny style prejudices.
The novel ends very abruptly too despite earlier attempts to setup some further story lines involved the main characters children but all that is cast aside.

The main issue as i said at the start is that its an inbetween work. Its obvious attempts at mythologising the rise of the white male to his predestined rule over the world are interrupted (thank god) with its very pulpy adventure elements. Some of which even Edgar Rice Burroughs might have rejected as being too outlandish.

In conclusion its an interesting piece which feels like "10,000 Years B.C." if it was paid for by like a church group or something.
Edit: Or to put it another way, its half caveman docudrama half wacky pulp adventure.

Made available by the Merril Collection.… (more)

I read one of the short stories in this collection, The Vagrants of the Barren. In this tale, the protagonist awakens suddenly two hours before dawn in midwinter to find his cabin ablaze. He escapes with his blanket, his coat, his rifle, his larrigans (footwear), and the clothes on his back, not too bad as he slept almost fully clothed. So that's the setup for a survival tale. The description of the cabin fire sounds like he overloaded the stove instead of starting an overnight fire. Tenderfoot trick. Never explained. All through the story I kept thinking, the author seems to know about woodcraft and survival... but what about that fire... he describes Pete as awakening every hour to build up his bivouack campfire... we do that with our woodstove on the cold winter nights when it's minus 25, but how could Pete have not done that in his cabin... And then he didn't notice a blizzard coming either. The fellow is seriously obtuse.

By the time Pete secures his survival in extremity by spending a day and part of a blizzardly night tracking a herd of caribou, slitting the throat of a collapsed animal only slightly more exhausted than himself, and drinking its blood, I was tired of the whole scenario.… (more)

I kept imagining this story being told to the author's children on a Christmas Eve night; the family happily gathered around a roaring fireplace.
Ironically, it looks like it was written well after Roberts permanently left his family behind in the pursuit of his career as a freelance writer.
The story tells of a cat inadvertently left behind on a small island, when the family that summers there goes home for the winter. Originally called 'Marooned,' it's a classic survival tale, as the pampered pet learns new skills to stay alive… (more)