SOURCE: Milton, John R. “The Primitive World of Vardis Fisher: The Idaho Novels.” Midwest Quarterly 16, no. 4 (July 1976): 369-84.

In the following essay, Milton discusses Fisher's theme of primitive humanity in the “Testament of Man” novel series.

With the subjects and themes of advanced society (at least in the last two or even three volumes of the “Vridar Hunter” tetralogy), Vardis Fisher is not at home. He is more vivid and more significant and more understanding when he deals with the primitive world, the “animal” world. This may be the result of his Idaho environment and of the primitive conditions under which he lived as a boy; but there is more to it than that. Fisher seems to think that man is still an animal in many ways, subject to non-reasonable pressures and to fears and prejudices which keep him from being a truly civilized creature. This is perhaps...