Strengths and shortcomings of In the Distance

Some of the descriptive passages are incredibly well written and his insight into the daily life and the hardships endured by those who crossed the country in covered wagon are excellent and perhaps unique and the intimate knowledge about survival skills makes for a great adventure story but, in the end, I'm a little let down by Hernan Diaz's novel, In the Distance, because, like man road stories - this one about he 20 or so years of wandering in the wilderness by the Swedish immigrant Hakan in his futile attempt to find his long-lost brother whom he believes to be in NYC has no sense of an ending. I mean since the entire quest and therefor the entire novel is about H's search for his brother, don't you think the novel should lead to either a meet-up w/ Linus or at the least some information about Linus's life and disappearance? In fact, this novel just seems to run out of gas: Hakan gets help from yet another unexpected quarter as a vineyard owner who happens to speak Swedish gets him passage about one of his ships bound for Alaska; the ship gets ice bound for a time, and when it's freed Hakan disembarks w/ the crazy idea of crossing the Bering Sea on foot. Maybe that's possible - or t least it was possible during the Ice Age - but then his plan is to cross Russian heading west to return to his native Sweden. Now that's impossible - even for a man who improbably survived for decades alone in the America West, somehow avoiding any attack by bears or other wild animals. Perhaps Diaz owes it to us to complete the narrative journey - in a second volume? - but I suspect Diaz himself has become weary of the trip. So, there are many fine points in this novel but there's no overall point, message, or insight, worth reading but it's puzzling to me how it could have been (one of three) Pulitzer fiction finalists.