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The Camerons

robert crichton

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A Scottish girl living in the coal-mining town of Pitmungo, sets out on her sixteenth birthday to find a husband who will help her achieve social success

510 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1972
Places
pitmungo, 

This edition

Format
510 pages, Paperback
Published
January 1, 1987 by Carroll \u0026 Graf Pub
ISBN
9780881843187
ASIN
0881843180
Language
English
Characters More characters

More editions

About the author

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robert crichton

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Crichton was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and grew up in Bronxville, New York.[1] He served in the infantry during World War II, and was wounded during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. Before returning to the States, he ran an ice cream factory on the outskirts of Paris; it was, he said, his decompression chamber. He attended Harvard University on the GI Bill and was a member of the famed class of 1950. His father, Kyle Crichton, was a writer/editor at Collier's magazine and author of novels and biographies, including a biography of the Marx Brothers. He also wrote a column for The New Masses, a Marxist weekly, under the name Robert Forsythe.

Crichton's first book, The Great Impostor, published in 1959, was the true, if picaresque, story of Fred Demara, an impostor who successfully assumed scores of guises including serving as a Trappist monk, a Texas prison warden and a practicing surgeon in the Royal Canadian Navy. The book was a bestseller and adapted into a successful 1961 film with Tony Curtis in the starring role. Crichton's second book, The Rascal and the Road, was a memoir about his escapades with Demara.

The non-fiction books were "hack-work", he said, written to support a growing family. In 1966, he published his first novel, The Secret of Santa Vittoria. The New York Times critic Orville Prescott wrote: "If I had my way the publication of Robert Crichton's brilliant novel...would be celebrated with fanfares of trumpets, with the display of banners and with festivals in the streets." The book was on the New York Times bestseller list for over 50 weeks, spending 18 of them at the top of the list, and became an international bestseller. Set in an Italian hill-town and telling the story of local resistance to the Nazis during World War II, the novel was adapted into a Golden Globe winning film of the same name in 1969.

Crichton's second and last novel, The Camerons, published by Knopf in 1972, was drawn from the lives of his great grandparents, a Scottish coal mining family. It too was a bestseller. He had intended to write a sequel, but the work was never completed.

Among countless magazine articles, he was best known for an essay "Air War--Vietnam," published by The New York Review of Books, in 1967. The essay was distributed all over the world.

Crichton died in 1993 in New Rochelle, New York, at the age of 68.

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 47 votes)
5 stars
12(26%)
4 stars
18(38%)
3 stars
17(36%)
2 stars
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47 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Sunstrok
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This book was written in 1978 and was a bestseller at the time. I am not sure how I acquired this book, but clearly the title was the appeal. The story was based on the author's grandparents' experiences. An interesting insight into how hard the miners' lives were in Scotland in the late 19th century. The book ends with his grandparents' family emigrating to the US, but does not cover anything that happens once they arrived here. Another old-style, yellowed paperback that was recycled except for the cover. I framed the cover since it included the Cameron tartan.
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Saphy_Potters
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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After reading The Secret of Santa Vittoria I wanted more by RC. Page turning historical fiction.
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BishoooDuck
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I read this when I was in high school and really liked it. I'm not sure I would rate it as highly now. I can't remember if it was a good period fiction novel, or bordering on pulp fiction, and not sure whether I'd have known the difference at that age. I like to think it was the former.
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LocalAutist
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Scottish coal mining family becomes involved in unionization. Strong characters in Maggie and Gillon Cameron.
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Vladimir0538
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Crichton is such a great storyteller and his characters are well developed.
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Addfire
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Simply put, probably the best book I have ever read. I'm pretty sure about my own rating, I read it three times and am considering a fourth and as you might guess, my paperback copy is getting a bit tattered. For those of us who despise unions or associations or any other worker group who band together, this book might change your mind, or at least you'll be somewhat educated as to the reasons for unions. I have read somewhere (maybe on a web search) that Crichton was planning to write a sequel with the Camerons who were on their way to North America when this novel ended. Unfortunately, Crichton died at 68 years of age in 1993 at the age of 68. Considering The Camerons was published in 1972, I wonder why he never finished that up. I guess we'll never know.
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hchen5041
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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A Lowland Scottish coal miner's daughter comes of age and goes north to get herself a Highlander. She does. Thirty years later I still vividly remember the story and the characters. That's gotta count for something.
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xGothimisalolix
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Liked it very much and found it hard to put down. Crichton is a wonderful storyteller.
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