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The Last Snow
The final, western masterpiece by Jon Messmann, aka Jon Sharpe, creator of the legendary Trailsman series of western.
Mountain Man Daniel Culver knew when the storms blew down soon from the North Country, the frontier town of Stoddard would be cut off from the world. He also knew what the Cheyenne war drums meant that he heard echoing in the hills. A massacre was coming unless the townspeople fled...and they had to do it now, because nobody had ever made it alive over Snowshoe Pass once the snows began. But no one would listen to the buckskin-clad loner except one tough, independent woman. Together these two had to make a either stay and face certain death battling the Cheyenne, or attempt to escape into a snowbound wilderness that no man had ever come out of alive.
Mountain Man Daniel Culver knew when the storms blew down soon from the North Country, the frontier town of Stoddard would be cut off from the world. He also knew what the Cheyenne war drums meant that he heard echoing in the hills. A massacre was coming unless the townspeople fled...and they had to do it now, because nobody had ever made it alive over Snowshoe Pass once the snows began. But no one would listen to the buckskin-clad loner except one tough, independent woman. Together these two had to make a either stay and face certain death battling the Cheyenne, or attempt to escape into a snowbound wilderness that no man had ever come out of alive.
256 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1989
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January 10, 2024
This is actually a pretty strong book. It's told in the first-person diary style, so you have to buy that of course the narrator can remember all this stuff before setting it down on paper (at one point he relays a story that someone told HIM, meaning he's accurately remembering someone remembering things). A bit overlong and overly philosophical--there were a few times when I wanted our guy to stop musing or talking about melting snow or recollecting something about a random townsperson--and the hero rapes someone at one point. One of those "your mouth says no, but your eyes say yes" things.
Now, I'm not one of those people who wants Scorsese to stop making gangster movies or to include a disclaimer that Joe Pesci is a bad guy and you shouldn't emulate them... for a bit, it seems for the dude's talk of warts-and-all reporting that it's just an antihero thing and we're not meant to see it positively.
But then... spoilers for book from 1989... the woman's current beau (she was the narrator's ex) hunts the narrator down and gives him a thrashing. He gets pretty butthurt about none of the townspeople intervening. You might think "yeah, because you raped someone--letting you get beat up is the least of how people respond to that!" But then the townspeople turn out to have carried out an Indian massacre and the beau was the ringleader (he's one of those sanctimonious religious assholes, while the narrator is more about free love and peacemaking--it's all pretty hippieish for the tail-end of the Reagan years).
So I guess we're supposed to think of everyone else as dicks and our narrator the rapist as the clear-cut good guy, especially since he immediately gets a new love interest. It's pretty dispiriting for a book about nuance and self-awareness. We're supposed to listen to this guy rail against hypocrisy and prejudice... dude doesn't even know rape is wrong! Come off it...
But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln liked the play.
Now, I'm not one of those people who wants Scorsese to stop making gangster movies or to include a disclaimer that Joe Pesci is a bad guy and you shouldn't emulate them... for a bit, it seems for the dude's talk of warts-and-all reporting that it's just an antihero thing and we're not meant to see it positively.
But then... spoilers for book from 1989... the woman's current beau (she was the narrator's ex) hunts the narrator down and gives him a thrashing. He gets pretty butthurt about none of the townspeople intervening. You might think "yeah, because you raped someone--letting you get beat up is the least of how people respond to that!" But then the townspeople turn out to have carried out an Indian massacre and the beau was the ringleader (he's one of those sanctimonious religious assholes, while the narrator is more about free love and peacemaking--it's all pretty hippieish for the tail-end of the Reagan years).
So I guess we're supposed to think of everyone else as dicks and our narrator the rapist as the clear-cut good guy, especially since he immediately gets a new love interest. It's pretty dispiriting for a book about nuance and self-awareness. We're supposed to listen to this guy rail against hypocrisy and prejudice... dude doesn't even know rape is wrong! Come off it...
But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln liked the play.
Displaying 1 of 1 review