Snowbound, by Richard Wheeler, $25.99.
Acclaimed author of more than 50 novels of the American West, Richard Wheeler now brings readers “Snowbound,” the biographical account of John C. Fremont’s daring venture to find a railway route along the 38th parallel to the Pacific and the country’s future.
Despite Fremont’s court-martial after the Civil War and his resignation from the army, some of Washington’s most powerful men stood behind him. With that in mind, Fremont sends his wife ahead to California by ship, gathers some of the men who had served with him in the Civil War, and they head west over the Wet and Sangre de Cristo mountains of southern Colorado to find a route to California.
Seen through the eyes of several members of the group, the harrowing trek slowly unfolds.
Dr. Benjamin Kern marvels at the almost-mystical hold Fremont seems to have on his men; marvels at the logic of Fremont traveling in winter because trains will one day do the same.
He chooses his men based not on their pedigree but on their knowledge of the outdoors. But the doctor also fears that, given Fremont’s lack of consideration for the horses and mules, he will treat the men in the same manner.
By January, the weather is taking its toll on the men. Mile by mile, day by day, hour by hour, their strength gradually flags. Yet Fremont’s grip never loosens.
Based on thorough research, “Snowbound” is a powerful story of one man’s obsession and the hold it comes to have not only on the men who follow him but the nation’s future.
Then Came the Evening, by Brian Hart, $25.
Brian Hart’s “Then Came the Evening” is one of those novels whose story quietly takes hold of the reader on Page One and never lets go.
No sooner does Bandy Dorner return home to Idaho after serving in Vietnam than he runs his car off the highway, finds his home in ashes, his wife pregnant and about to leave town with another man, and a cop lying dead on the roadside.
Two decades later, Dorner emerges from prison, only to find a different world, his wife and now-teenage son all but strangers. And he comes to believe “nobody can hate like family.”
Using both the stark and dangerous life of prison and Idaho’s demanding yet beautiful landscape as backdrop, the author builds a first-rate if complex story around regrets, love and hope.
Sybil Downing is a Boulder novelist who writes regularly about new regional fiction.
