In the Distance Summary: Hernan Diaz’s Sweeping Frontier Epic
Introduction
A colossal white-haired giant rises naked from a hole in the Arctic ice and climbs aboard a ship trapped in frozen waters, where sailors mockingly call him the Hawk.
Who this man is — and how a Swedish farm boy became such a figure — is the story Hernan Diaz tells in In the Distance.
Håkan Söderström reaches America in the Gold Rush era, but a dockside mix-up lands him in San Francisco while his brother heads for New York.
Unable to afford passage east, he sets out on foot across an unexplored continent. What follows is decades of frontier survival, a feared legend he never wanted, and one long confession told by firelight.
TL;DR: The Hawk’s Life in Brief
A penniless Swedish immigrant spends a lifetime walking east across 19th-century America, searching for the brother he lost on the docks.
- Håkan Söderström sails to the wrong coast and resolves to cross the continent on foot to reach New York.
- His journey passes through gold-camp captivity, a desert rescue by a naturalist, wagon-train tragedy, and years of total solitude.
- Rumors twist his acts of self-defense into the legend of “the Hawk,” a giant killer.
- Core themes: isolation, devotion to a lost sibling, mythmaking, and the rough reality behind the frontier dream.
- The whole book unfolds as a single fireside confession aboard an icebound ship.
In the Distance Summary (Spoilers Ahead)
Warning: this section retells the entire plot of In the Distance, including the ending. Stop here if you want to read it fresh.
The novel opens aboard the Impeccable, a schooner frozen into Arctic waters off Alaska.
A colossal, white-haired man climbs naked from a hole in the ice, and the crew mockingly names him “the Hawk.” He is Håkan Söderström, and Diaz frames the entire book as the confession he gives by the deck fire.
His story begins on a poor tenant farm in Sweden, where his brother Linus was his protector and storyteller.
Their father sells an illegally raised twin foal to buy the boys passage to America. In the crowd at Portsmouth, England, Håkan loses Linus and boards the wrong ship — sailing around Cape Horn to San Francisco instead of New York.
Landing in Gold Rush California, Håkan resolves to walk east across the continent. He falls in with the Brennan family, whose patriarch strikes gold and turns paranoid and cruel.
Soon the veiled woman who rules the settlement of Clangston buys the claim and takes Håkan captive, dressing him in historical costumes like a living doll and locking him away for months.
The woman’s mutilated assistant frees Håkan one night, and he escapes into a sandstorm. He survives the desert by drinking the blood of sage hens until he collapses.
The Scottish naturalist John Lorimer rescues him, teaching him English, anatomy, and an evolutionary theory in which all life grew from a primeval brain.
An expedition to the salt flats of Saladillo nearly kills the whole party. Later, Lorimer and Håkan stay behind at a Native camp destroyed by white raiders, where a Native physician teaches them antiseptic surgery.
Before they part, Håkan receives a pony named Pingo and a silver compass. When Pingo’s surgery wound later fills with maggots, Håkan is forced to mercy-kill the animal.
On the great emigrant trail, Håkan signs on as a guard with Jarvis Pickett, a fraudulent wagon captain who extorts gifts from settlers. A wagon accident severs a boy’s arm, and Håkan’s amputation saves him — and draws him close to the boy’s sister, Helen.
Pickett’s unproven “cutoff” proves fatal: disguised outlaws called the Wrathful Angels massacre the settlers, including Helen, and Håkan tears through most of the attackers with his bare strength.
The survivors name him “the Hawk,” and the name spreads down the trail as the story of a feared killer. Wracked with guilt, Håkan flees into total solitude, muffling his animals’ hooves with canvas and wearing a lion-skin coat with a cougar-head hood.
In a town, a cruel sheriff recognizes him, sews a thread cross into his chest, and parades him for money until his deputy, Asa, frees him at gunpoint.
Håkan and Asa build a quiet life on the run, sharing fires, elaborate meals, and plans to reach New York together.
When Asa breaks his leg in a fall, they hide in a canyon cave to heal — until bounty hunters ambush and kill Asa while Håkan watches helplessly from above. Grief erases his last tie to the human world.
Håkan spends decades wandering and digging a vast network of underground clay burrows. Five former outlaws eventually find him and try to recruit the Hawk; he drugs their stew with Lorimer’s old sedative tincture and slips away.
His journey back toward Clangston reveals a transformed land: the town has become a city, Brennan’s mine a roaring industrial quarry, and the hidden gold long gone.
Oddly relieved, Håkan wanders to a vineyard owned by Captain Altenbaum, a Finnish-Swedish former fur trader who treats him with dignity and arranges passage to Alaska aboard the Impeccable.
Back in the present, powder charges free the ship from the ice.
Refusing Alaska, Håkan says goodbye to the young boy who heard his tale, steps onto the frozen sea, and walks west in a straight line — toward Sweden, and his long-lost brother.
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Characters in In the Distance
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Håkan Söderström (“the Hawk”) | Swedish immigrant separated from his brother who crosses the continent on foot and grows into a mythic giant. |
| Linus Söderström | Håkan’s elder brother and the reason for his lifelong eastward journey. |
| Erik Söderström | Håkan’s father, who sells an illegally raised twin foal to buy his sons’ tickets to America. |
| James Brennan | Irish miner who takes Håkan in and is consumed by gold fever. |
| Eileen Brennan | James’s wife, who nurses Håkan on the voyage and draws him a world map. |
| The Veiled Woman | Toothless brothel owner who controls Clangston and holds Håkan captive. |
| The Fat Man | The veiled woman’s promoter who secretly frees Håkan after she mutilates him. |
| John Lorimer | Scottish naturalist who rescues Håkan and teaches him language, anatomy, and dissection. |
| The Native Physician | Elder healer who teaches Lorimer and Håkan antiseptic surgical methods. |
| Antim | Native warrior who gifts Håkan his pony and guides Lorimer back to Saladillo. |
| Pingo | Håkan’s bay roan pony, saved by emergency surgery and later mercy-killed. |
| Jarvis Pickett | Fraudulent wagon train captain who extorts settlers and leads them into an ambush. |
| Helen | Emigrant woman Håkan grows close to after saving her brother; killed in the outlaw massacre. |
| The Neckless Sheriff | Lawman who captures Håkan, wounds him, and exhibits him for money. |
| Asa | Deputy who frees Håkan at gunpoint and becomes his devoted wilderness companion. |
| Captain Altenbaum | Fin-Swedish vineyard owner who treats Håkan with dignity and arranges his passage. |
| The Young Boy on the Impeccable | Fifteen-year-old prospector who listens to Håkan’s story and watches him leave. |
The Ideas Beneath the Frontier
| Theme | How the Book Presents It |
|---|---|
| Extreme Isolation | Håkan spends years without human contact, from the open desert to underground burrows where seasons pass unnoticed. |
| Fraternal Devotion | The memory of Linus drives decades of eastward walking, and the lost reunion stays at the center of Håkan’s choices. |
| Mythmaking | Acts of self-defense swell through rumor and fear into the legend of “the Hawk,” a monstrous killer Håkan never set out to be. |
| Frontier Cruelty | Gold fever, captivity, fake land deeds, corrupt lawmen, and disguised outlaws fill the landscape Håkan crosses. |
| Science and Shared Origins | Lorimer’s evolutionary theory and the Native physician’s antiseptic methods connect Håkan’s survival to medicine and the study of living things. |
| Deconstructing the Frontier Myth | Romantic Western imagery sits beside filthy mining camps, massacred emigrant trains, and an actor on stilts playing “the Hawk” in a city street show. |
Quotes from In the Distance
They asked, Hawk can? Hawk can what? What is it you can? By the time I could speak and explain, I was the Hawk.
It is not your fault.
I can’t. I can’t let you go.
Knowing nature, Lorimer would often say, means learning how to be. And to achieve this, we must listen to the constant sermon of things.
What greater tribute than to be feasted upon by one’s fellow creatures? What monument could be nobler than the breathing tomb of a coyote or the soaring urn of a vulture? What preservation more dependable? What resurrection more literal?
I can help.
Because of you.
Now, I may be able to walk over the sea. Otherwise, next winter. Then, a straight line west. To Sweden.
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In the Distance at a Glance
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Genre & Subgenre | Literary Fiction; Historical Fiction, Western, Psychological Fiction, Adventure / Epic Saga |
| Core Narrative Tropes | The Quest / Odyssey, Separated Siblings, Accidental Immigrant, Misunderstood Folk Legend, Wilderness Survival, Mentor and Protégé |
| Tone & Atmosphere | Lyrical, solemn, stark, melancholic, visceral, desolate, mythic |
| Primary Conflict | Håkan’s struggle to survive the hostile frontier, find his brother Linus, and outrun the violent legend of “the Hawk” |
| Pacing Style | Episodic, contemplative, and expansive; a retrospective tale told in one night |
| ISBN | 978-0593850565 |
| Pages | 272 |
| Book Structure | A prologue and epilogue set aboard the icebound Impeccable, enclosing 24 numbered sections told chronologically |
| Author Background | Hernan Diaz is an Argentine-born American writer and Pulitzer finalist; In the Distance (2017) was his debut novel |
Books Like In the Distance
- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy — A literary Western with a mythic, violent vision of the 19th-century frontier, sharing Diaz’s desolate landscapes and moral isolation.
- The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt — A Gold Rush-era Western that upends genre conventions and, like In the Distance, centers brotherly bonds and the absurdities of gold fever.
- Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams — A literary wilderness story about an outsider confronting the brutal reality of the untamed West and deep existential loneliness.
- The Son by Philipp Meyer — A multigenerational Texas epic covering captivity, border violence, and the transformation of the American landscape.
- Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier — A Civil War-era odyssey in which a lone traveler crosses a hostile landscape to reunite with a beloved person.
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry — A sprawling trail journey with harsh frontier conditions and enduring companionship at its core.
Hernan Diaz: The Myth-Maker of American Fiction
Hernan Diaz is an Argentine-born American writer whose fiction reexamines foundational American myths.
His debut novel, In the Distance (2017), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His second novel, Trust (2022), became a New York Times bestseller, won the Kirkus Prize, and was also a Pulitzer finalist.
A Whiting Award winner and Guggenheim fellow, Diaz lives and writes in New York.
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Who Should Read In the Distance?
- Readers drawn to literary Westerns that question frontier mythology.
- Fans of character studies that follow one life across decades.
- Historical fiction readers interested in 19th-century immigration and westward expansion.
- Those who enjoy frame narratives and episodic, contemplative pacing rather than fast plot turns.
Note that the story includes graphic frontier violence and detailed surgical scenes, and it unfolds as one long retrospective confession.
Readers who prefer brisk, dialogue-driven plots may find the rhythm slow.
