Customer Reviews

These Thousand Hills

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In my opinion, Guthrie's "These Thousand Hills" is a typical western novel. It tells the story of a young man named Lat and his journey into adulthood. His adventure as a cowboy is complete with prostitutes, encounters with Indians and "bad guy" cowboys, murder, and love. Lat dreams of starting his own ranch, but he comes from a very humble background, and has to make his money fur trapping and racing his horse. His prostitute lover, Callie, gives him her life savings to bet on his horse in hopes of getting him to marry her. Lat can't marry her because she would not be good for his reputation, so he marries a well-to-do woman named Joyce instead, although he knows he loves Callie. Lat sacrifices many of his relationships in order to keep his reputation and work toward his dream.
Guthrie uses imagery in describing the scenery, but more so in describing the women in the story. He describes both Joyce and Callie in meticulous detail, along with all of the other women featured in the story. I pictured all of the women in the story easily, but Guthrie did not ever give a detailed description of any of the men in the book. He also uses diction to set the rugged, cowboy setting, often using a western accent and sometimes using words that seem uneducated. Overall, the book was simple and not difficult to understand. Guthrie basically tells the reader exactly what is going on, so there is not very much to analyze or look deeper into. I enjoyed the book and it had all the makings of a perfect cowboy tale.

This book is very enjoyable and I very much like the many "mountain man" stories by AB Guthrie. He adds a realistic dimension to his stories, that allows you to actually find the areas he writes about.

Although Thousand Hills was entertaining, it was not up to what I look forward to in Guthrie's works. It was not as smooth reading as others by Guthrie.

A.B. Guthrie is perhaps one of the best writers I have encountered in many years. In reading this book I felt that I was actually there as events unfolded. One of the all time best!