89 books like Beyond the Far Horizon

Grounded in historical fact, The Orenda (The Magic) tells the story of Jesuit missionaries caught up in the war between the Wendats (Hurons) and the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) living on the shores of Lake Huron in the mid-1600s. It’s a very dark book, with its depictions of ritual torture not for the squeamish, but it perfectly captures the time and culture of two very different civilizations, grappling to understand one another. Bowden does an excellent job of capturing the thoughts and outlook of the Wendat war chief Bird, and the French missionaries struggling to Christianize his village.

I loved this book because it helped me to understand the Indians’ way of thinking and their outlook on the world.

I read it in high school, again in college, and still again (twice) as an adult, once aloud to my 3 young daughters over 3 weeks at bedtime. For me, it is the most powerful, frontier-themed American novel out there. 

 I love a novel that educates me and tells me things I am surprised I didn’t know because I should have, in beautifully constructed sentences.

The dialogue carries its characters so naturally that it is as if you are speaking with them yourself at your main room table in your 18th-century frontier home in Pennsylvania.

Largely forgotten now, this was a huge bestseller when it was published in 1978. Based on stories drawn from the Winter Count of the Lakota Sioux (a record of pictographs depicting notable events of the year), this novel tells the story of two Sioux families living on the Great Plains prior to the arrival of white settlers.

Running 1009 pages, Hanta Yo is surely one of the most singular books in all of literature in that author Hill worked with a Sioux elder to translate her manuscript into the Siouan language and then back into English. I love the book because it offers a deep dive into the thoughts of the Sioux people and their way of life. Only at the end of the book do they encounter the troubles attendant to the white culture.

No list of historical fiction depicting the Indians’ way of life would be complete without the inclusion of a book by the Gears, who’ve written many novels of Native life years before the arrival of European explorers.

I like this book because it’s a bit of a retelling of Hansel and Gretel set in the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) culture. Two young children are among many captured by a witch and bound for an uncertain fate. The book delves into the widespread fear of witches in many Indian cultures and also offers a glimpse of life among the Haudenosaunee, who famously lived in large agricultural communities, dwelling in longhouses surrounded by palisades.

Keepers of the Game is a great book for provoking arguments. Martin asks why Native Americans willingly participated in the European fur trade, overhunting beavers and other wild furbearers to near-extinction in the process. His succinctly explained answer is a creative one that centers on the cooperative spiritual relationship between indigenous peoples and indigenous animals. His thesis has generated multiple scholarly counters—a clear sign of true originality. This book really made me think about the different kinds of relationships people have with animals. I think it’s far too easy to assume that we all see the same thing when looking at a wild creature. Martin’s work, though, impressed upon me the need to take seriously other, more unfamiliar perspectives on the natural world.    

This book places First Nations and Métis women at the heart of fur trade society and shows that they played crucial roles as workers and wives, mothers, and daughters. Van Kirk creates striking portraits of women whose relationships with fur traders made them important linchpins between their Indigenous and Métis communities and white fur trade society.

The book takes an innovative approach to studying the fur trade in early Canada. Van Kirk also shows how these women’s lives were deeply affected by changes in the fur trade and the coming of settler society to Western Canada.

As an historian, I enjoyed Vanessa Winn’s portrayal of Colonial Victoria in The Chief Factor’s Daughter. Hudson Bay Chief Factor, John Work, protects all his daughters with many restrictions on their lives causing his eldest daughter, Margaret, to fear that at age 23 she will never find a suitor and is destined to remain a spinster forever. The author shows a fascinating side of society in 1858 where although Margaret and her sisters belong to the upper class in the fur-trading community, they are also the victims of snobbery and racism because their mother is Metis. Winn’s sequel Trappings continues with the story of Kate Work, another daughter, and both books are a good read for those who love family history.

 I love doing historical research, and nothing is more exciting than examining primary sources in which you can read the words of historical figures, either written or spoken. This is one such book.

The University of Calgary scholar Barbara Belyea has produced this annotated volume of David Thompson’s daily record of his exploration of the mighty, 1,200-mile-long Columbia River, which rises in southeastern British Columbia and drains into the Pacific Ocean near present-day Astoria, Oregon.   

These stories are tied to some of Minnesota’s most famous events, back to 1830, and tell stories of fur trappers, pioneers, train robbers, and gangsters. Minnesota is the setting of my upcoming novel. I read novels and stories like this help fix the setting into my mind as I wrote.  

The Big Sky is a masterpiece of historical fiction and an often-cited classic novel of the American West. It earns this distinction because of its original characterization, its use of historical and geographical accuracy, its thematic depth, and its symbolism. It is set in the mountain man or fur trade era, and it shows the consequences of White men going into the wilderness. This book introduces the idea, in cultural and environmental terms, that in the occupation of the American West, people ruin the thing they love. This book not only makes it to the top of the lists by western writers, but it also is well appreciated by scholars and students in Western American Literature.