The Last Buffalo Hunter: A Novel [Hardcover]

Jake Mosher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2001

Set in the Big Sky country of Montana, starring a sensitive boy, a rambunctious grandfather, and a cast of Western characters that includes unreformed Indians, hucksters, and dudes, this sprawling, exuberant page-turner marks the debut of Jake Mosher, who writes about the West, its history, its people, and its scenery with the skill and assurance of a born storyteller, the finesse of a born raconteur.

The story revolves around reticent but articulate young Kyle who, on his fourteenth birthday, is given bus tickets to spend the summer in his father's natal state and is remanded to the not-so-tender care of Cole, his outrageous grandfather. Cole, a throwback to the Old West, appears to be waging a one-man war on a whole range of fools in a state where some folks take Norman MacLean literally. As Cole discovers, the twentieth century is fast encroaching on a world where no one ever tells anyone what to do. But the focus of his outrage and ill temper is Bruce Tipton, a smooth developer who is determined to introduce a fenced park for "wild buffalo" right next to his home. Tipton's chicanery and venality find their match, and more, in Cole's stubbornness.

This is a novel painted with a broad brush, incorporating a journal Kyle finds of his great-grandfather's trek from Kansas City to the Montana Territory in 1862 that brings to vivid life the early days of its settlement. It contains a cast of unforgettably vivid characters, convincing and larger than life, while always retaining the laconic voice of a boy whose droll wit and wry narration make us realize that, without any question, we are in the hands of a master storyteller. And that this is one summer that will be as fondly and brightly remembered by you, the reader, as by the young narrator, Kyle.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A 14-year-old tenderfoot on a summer visit to Montana learns to rough it with his elders in this invigorating if uneven contemporary western debut. Kyle Richards can't wait to fish for trout and tramp the Bitterroot foothills alongside his legendary grandfather, Cole. What he discovers, though, is that far from the kindly old patriarch of Kyle's imagination, Cole is more a community scourge. Boisterous, rambunctious, irreverent and impetuous, the bearded 70-year-old logger immediately drags the shy boy into a wild frontier world of poaching, drinking, whoring and violent disregard for authority or social change. Only gradually does Kyle begin to develop a growing appreciation for the often vulgar and profane old man, who teaches him that one has to earn the right to enjoy the Montana wilderness. Although plausible character and situation take a hike long before Kyle gets to venture into the woods Kyle is too prissy to be credible, and Cole is drawn so broadly that he comes off as a nearly absurd caricature the novel rocks along with well-timed and often poetic descriptions of Montana's pastoral summer beauty. As conflicts between Cole and a local developer build to a climax, long excerpts from Cole's grandfather's journal interrupt the story. The journals have a profound effect on Kyle's understanding of Montana, but the memoir's text is far too modern in style and composition to be a convincing historical document, and it eventually proves to be an annoying interruption to the primary story. This otherwise briskly paced and often lyrical novel indicates great promise from a new western voice. There's no doubting Mosher's passion for his subject matter, and once his technique catches up, he'll be a writer to be reckoned with.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

For his fourteenth birthday, upstate New Yorker Kyle gets a bus ticket to Montana, where he'll spend the summer with his grandfather. Long fascinated by the West, Kyle is feverishly excited, until he arrives and meets his grandfather, Cole--a hard-drinking, profane, erratic, and violent logger. The summer unfolds at a lurching, whiskey-saturated pace as sensitive Kyle tries to learn from his grandfather while coping with his fury, drinking, outrageous commentary, mulish defiance, and, ultimately, his death. Frequently mannered, overwritten, and even melodramatic, the prose is further weakened by overreaching plot elements (an ancestor's journal is particularly contrived) and exaggerated, stereotypical characterizations. But first-novelist Mosher maintains a level of compelling suspense leading up to the heart-pounding scenes of Cole's last days, and readers who share Kyle's attraction to the mythical Wild West will like the descriptions of hard-living men and their outlaw behavior. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 308 pages
• Publisher: David R Godine; 1st edition (April 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567921469
• ISBN-13: 978-1567921465
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,814,800 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This book left me wondering only how it got published., July 24, 2001

By 

"smugly" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Buffalo Hunter: A Novel (Hardcover)

Trust me. I'm being kind with the 3 Star review.

This is a book that began strong. The writing is vivid. The characters are familiar and, and the setting is seductive. For the first 50 to 100 pages, I thought I was going to thoroughly enjoy this story (hence the third star), but that was before I realized that the author had no idea where it was going.

To say that the main characters in this book are cliché gives new meaning and intensity to the word cliché. The characters quickly degenerated from being interesting to being ridiculous.

A 14 year old boy is sent by his otherwise responsible parents by bus from their home in upstate New York to visit his Grandfather in Montana for the summer. If you've ever had a 14 year old boy you know that this in itself is suspect. He reaches Montana and is finally met by his Grandfather WHO IS John Wayne in the role of Rooster Cockburn. Following in the footsteps of all good Grandpas, Cole (Rooster) teaches the boy to fly fish the local rivers, drink beer and whisky, have sex with the Indians, and shoot at the local police when they come to arrest him for the destruction of another man's property. No kidding.

To his credit as a Grandpa, Cole/Rooster also passes on a bit of family history to the boy (which he never saw fit to share with his own son for no good reason, in the form of a leather-bound diary, written by the boy's Great Great Grandfather. The diary was written as this pioneer made his way West, alone, during the 1860s to settle in Montana. This character is both cliché and not believable. He IS Robert Redford in the role of Jeremiah Johnson ("Liver Eatin' Johnston), complete with the character of Bear Claw Chris Lapp, who saves him before he dies from exposure. He later becomes Kevin Kostner in the role of "Dances With Wolves", complete with his tribal bride and the Medicine Man who predicts the extermination of the Indian people by the oncoming hordes of whites. I kid you not. But this character is also not believable because even as he is dying of exhaustion, sunburn, and starvation and is brought down to such a condition that travel means pulling himself across the prairie by his fingertips, he stops to write in his journal with the proficiency of a literary master. GIMME A BREAK! Even his horse had died of thirst at this point.

This book is chock full of good Indians who have been abused by the evil white man and of course most of these Indians have incredible mystical powers. What else? Heck, I was engaged to an Apache girl for years and if she had any mystical powers she surely never let me see them. I guess she was the exception to that rule.

The book was complete with the old western scene of the cowboy who dies, gets up and dies again, and then does it again and again ad nauseum too. At one point, Grandpa Cole, who fis always near death from having inhaled too much coal dust in his younger years, rips the oxygen tubes out of his nose while he is dying in the hospital, is carried out of the hospital so that he can man a canoe and shoot the most dangerous rapids in Montana and he dies in the canoe with his head under water, only to resurface at the end of the ride strong of body and of voice, and immediately go jogging through the woods!

But it was the last few pages of the book that really took the cake. At this point, Grandpa Rooster Cockburn Cole grabs an old Sharps rifle and heads on to a neighbor's property intent upon killing the neighbor's entire herd of bison, which he does. The last Bison left standing is ol' Splinter Horn, the biggest, meanest bull this side o' Hell. The bull charges, Cole squeezes the trigger on the Sharps, the old rifle, which had belonged to his "Dances with Wolves" Grandfather, explodes in his hands, sending the bullet into the bison. But before the Bison dies, Cole/Rooster is transformed into, of ALL literary characters, Captain Ahab, as he rides off into the woods on Splinter Horn / Moby Dick's horns, never to be seen again.

Again, three stars is generous. Bear in mind that I did not deduct points for one of the worst editing jobs I have ever encountered in a published book. The book is full of typos, like the one on page 202, 6th line down: "...and handed my his razor,..." and the one on page 235, 23rd line down: "...to shot dozens of imaginary arrows at me". At the end, the publisher tells us about the fancy type setting job he did for the book, which led me to wonder if he was too busy setting type to have someone check the book for annoying typographical errors.

If you want to read a much better book of this type, check out Vardis Fischer's "Mountain Man".

Sorry, but if this book will teach its reader anything it is that you too can get a novel published.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful first novel, wonderful novel period!, September 10, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Buffalo Hunter: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Last Buffalo Hunter is the first book I've read in many, many years that is set in a "real" Montana. There isn't any of the glossed-over Hollywood imagery that so often accompanies anything to do with Montana these days. This novel is about the raw, hard sides of life not just in the west but everywhere else. It's sharp, compelling, and through a set of well-developed, unique characters tells a gripping story of love, loss, adventure and understanding. It weaves legend into contemporary life, using touches of magic realism without becoming a fantasy. It left me feeling haunted and at the same time satisfied. There is no doubt that The Last Buffalo Hunter is a remarkable accomplishment, more so because it is the writer's first novel. I am anxiously awaiting a second book from Jake Mosher and a third, fourth, fifth, ect. This is one read you won't regret!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Mosher Genes Have Flowered, April 6, 2002

By 

Marvin Minkler "North Star Monthly" (St. Johnsbury, VT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Buffalo Hunter: A Novel (Hardcover)

I absolutely loved this book.
The son of the renowned raconteur of the Northeast Kingdom, Howard Mosher and his wife Phyllis, first time novelist Jake Mosher has planted his boot heels high in the wilds of Mantana and stomped himself a foothold. The Last Buffalo Hunter tells the sory of 14 year-old Kyle Richards and his wild and wooly coming of age during a summer spent with his proud and profane grandfather, Cole, in the Big Sky country of Montana. Cole is a rugged logger and former broncobuster, as quick to throw a punch, as he is to pull a gun. Womanizing, whiskey drinking, Kyle's grandpa is a profane throwback to an era that has all but faded away, but ruggedly holds on like the last traces of ice along a high mountain trail in summer.
A wonderful cast of characters ramble through the book, including a cute young Indian girl who has cast her eye on a bewildered Kyle. Hucksters, dudes, unreformed Indians, and a barroom of hard drinking, hard loving men and women, hoisting shots together in drunken, fight filled nights. In the background lurks the long running fued with millionaire developer Bruce Tipton and his herd of buffalo that surround Cole Richards home. Encroaching daily, smothering him, and his stubborn view of what's really right and wrong, building to a showdown that seems as inevitable as so-called progress and development.
A journal Kyle finds of his great-grandfather's arduous journey from Kansas City to Montana in 1862 flows like a winding mountain stream through this book occasionally. The dusty journal brings to life the terrible ordeal of moving west, and gives this marvelous book a mystical quality at times. A mystical quality as ominous as the howling of the ghostly black wolf that seems to know every step Kyle takes high in the mountains at night, and the yellow hate-filled stare of the fenced-in buffallo bull, Splinter Horn. Jake Mosher wites about the West, it's history, it's people, and it's scenery with a skill well beyond his young years. The Mosher genes are truly flowering.
As I reluctantly turned the last page of this book, I sighed contentedly, but sad that it was over. I had been in the hands of a master stryteller, a craftsman of words. I knew that Kyle's summer in Montan would remain fondly in my memory as much as it would by the young grandson of Cole Richards.