Jeffrey Lent's prose is spectacular, taking a little-known piece of New England history and turning it into a dark, atmospheric novel. His world building is outstanding, transporting you to a frontier New Hampshire outpost in the early 19th century, where you can feel the wind, hear the birds, smell the mud. I'm currently writing a thriller about the logging camps of Maine in the 1850s, and my aim has always been to make it into a great Eastern - a novel as redolent of the woodlands of the east as Cormac McCarthy's work is of the west. Jeffrey Lent has beaten me to it. One of the best books I've read in years.
Lost Nation delves beneath the bright, promising veneer of early-nineteenth-century New England to unveil a startling parable of individualism and nationhood. The novel opens with a man known as Blood, guiding an oxcart of rum toward the wild country of New Hampshire, an ungoverned territory called the Indian Stream -- a land where the luckless or outlawed have made a fresh start. Blood is a man of contradictions, of learning and wisdom, but also a man with a secret past that has scorched his soul. He sets forth to establish himself as a trader, hauling with him Sally, a sixteen-year-old…
Ranger lit is the best. (I spend half the year working as a seasonal in one of the last great wildernesses of the east.) And I tend to really like Peter Heller's stuff - The River ranks among the finest novels of the past decade - so I was predisposed to enjoy this title. It isn't his best work, but it's a very compelling read nonetheless, following enforcement ranger Ren Hooper around Yellowstone, seeing the park through his eyes. (As a park ranger, he rings true.) A good, page-turning tale of our uneasy relationship with wild places.
The best-selling author of The River returns with a vibrant, lyrical novel about an enforcement ranger in Yellowstone National Park who likes wolves better than most people. When a clandestine range war threatens his closest friend, he must shake off his own losses and act swiftly to discover the truth and stay alive.
“A good story that’s intertwined like leaves afloat in a river with the current of Heller’s descriptive powers… Filled with Heller’s lush writing… Powerful.” –Denver Post
Officer Ren Hopper is an enforcement ranger with the National Park Service, tasked with duties both mundane and thrilling: Breaking up…
Probably best known as one of the creators of Netflix's Outer Banks, Shannon Burke is also a novelist. On a first-responder novel binge, I discovered his book Safe Light, which draws from his previous career as an NYC paramedic. While I enjoyed it, it didn't prepare me for the greatness of Into the Savage Country. Following an inexperienced, headstrong fur trapper into the daunting, wild, barely explored territory west of the Mississippi in the 1820s, it brought to mind one of my favorite books of all time, A.B. Guthrie's The Big Sky. Into the Savage Country is another that sits high on my list of the best titles of recent years.
It’s the early nineteenth century, and the American West is still wild and untamed. Young William Wyeth is ready to throw caution to the wind and join a fur-trapping outfit, even though it means braving wild animals, sudden blizzards, and conflicts with hostile British trappers.
Still, nothing can compare to the elation William feels when he meets and falls in love with Alene, a proud widow who insists she will not wait more than a year. As William sets off on one last mission with a group of grizzled eccentrics and an enigmatic, hotheaded leader, it soon becomes clear that…
Almost twenty years ago, Andrew Vietze made an unexpected career change: from punk rock magazine editor to park ranger at Baxter State Park in Maine. Home to Katahdin, the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, Baxter State Park sees some 60,000 visitors each summer alone, keeping the park rangers beyond busy. From midnight search-and-rescue missions to trail maintenance to cleaning toilets, Baxter rangers do it all… and, over the decades, Vietze has seen it all.
As he grows from neophyte to old hand, the relationships that Vietze builds with his fellow rangers are illustrated as vibrantly as any attempt to save a lightning strike victim or raid on illegal campers. In This Wild Land, Vietze tells his story with humor, action, and an eye for the compelling details of life as a park ranger, making it the perfect read for outdoor and armchair adventurers alike.
