Mountain Man [Library Binding]

Vardis Fisher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1980

Tailored after the actual "Crow Killer" John Johnson, Sam Minard is a mountain man who seeks the freedom that the Rocky Mountains offers trappers. After his beloved Indian wife is murdered, Sam Minard becomes obsessed with vengeance, and his fortunes become intertwined with those of Kate Bowden, a widow who faces madness. This remarkable frontier fiction captures that brief season when the romantic myth of the far West became a fact.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Vardis Fisher was the author of more than thirty-five books, including Tale of Valor: A Novel of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Children of God: An American Epic, Pemmican, and (with Opal Laurel Holmes) Gold Rushes and Mining Camps of the Early American West. Richard W. Etulain is Professor of History at the University of New Mexico.

Product Details

• Library Binding: 318 pages
• Publisher: Amereon Ltd (October 1, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0891908323
• ISBN-13: 978-0891908326
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,024,703 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliantly Written & Beautifully Expressed Tale, February 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Mountain Man (Library Binding)

This novel is a lifelong passion for me. I read Mountain Man as a project with my father when I was 11, some 22 years ago. I associate this work with wide-eyed boyhood and love of nature. It rings of a time when America was still a wild frontier of hard men, bent on survival and self government. I refuse to apply 90s political correctness to this novel. Such intellectual revisionism had no place in Sam Minard's world, and therefore it has no place in the assessment of the work itself after the fact. I have read this novel at least 25 times, and find new and more rapturous moments in it each successive time. The love that Sam had for Lotus and the regard he had for Kate are two of the most shining examples of literary love I have ever encountered. This book is a glorious orchestration of a seldom taught period of American history and an Old West adventure tale of the first order. It recounts a time of great courage and brutality, portrayed fairly and with much class and distinction. It would have been easy to make it sappy and formulaic, but Fisher deftly avoids such tactics. Instead, he is as detached from this novel as "The Almighty" was from the characters of Sam, Lotus, Kate and the Big Sky wilderness: He created, then set free his creation to fend for itself. Waugh! This is as solid a novel as there is on this subject, if not the finest ever.

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A RENAISSANCE MAN IN THE AMERICAN WEST, February 13, 2004

By 

D. McAllister "MRD" (Somewhere in the Field) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mountain Man: A Novel of Male and Female in the Early American West (Mass Market Paperback)

MOUNTAIN MAN continues to be a classic in American Western literature. The major foundation for the movie, Jeremiah Johnson, MOUNTAIN MAN tells the story of Samuel John Minard, a mountain man known for his physical prowess and for his quick and educated intellect. A renaissance man who has chosen the life of the great American West.

In his adventures Sam meets up with Indians of various tribes, other mountain men and a crazy pilgrim woman. HIs marriage to an Indian maiden leads him into a one-man war with sweeping consequences for himself and for his enemies.

MOUNTAIN MAN, as is the case with most books upon which movies are based, considerably outshines JEREMIAH JOHNSON in its story and characterizations. But, hey, I love the movie as well. I guess that says a lot about what I think of the book.

THE HORSEMAN

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Adventure Story...., May 9, 2002

By 

James Poe (Harlingen, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mountain Man: A Novel of Male and Female in the Early American West (Mass Market Paperback)

A WELL WRITTEN, brutally graphic tale based on the brief era of the mountain men. Though published several decades ago, the writing is fresh and excitingly paced. A keen and unbiased insight into the harsh realities of mountain men and Indian life during the early to mid 1800's. I've also enjoyed the Jeremiah Johnson movie, but similarities to this novel are remote. This is one of those books I found myself reading well past normal bedtime. The material quality of this paperback edition is superb. I highly recommend!