Thunder Mountain

by Theodore Pratt

Brother fights brother in this excitingly frank novel of naked human emotions roused to the boiling point when a ruthless millionaire cuts off a tiny group of men and women from the rest of the world -- and keeps them prisoners on top of a primitive Colorado mountain.

191 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Theodore Pratt (1901 - 1969) was an American writer who is best known for his novels set in Florida. He was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1901 to Thomas A. and Emma Pratt. The family later moved to New Rochelle, New York, where Theodore attended high school. After completing high school, he attended Colgate University for two years, and then Columbia University for another two years, but did not graduate. He worked in New York City as a play reader, a staff reader for a movie company, and a columnist for the New York Sun. He also free-lanced articles for The New Yorker and other national magazines.

Theodore Pratt published more than thirty novels, including four mysteries under the pseudonym of "[author=Timothy Brace|21712110]", two collections of short stories, two plays (adapted from his novels), a few non-fiction books and pamphlets, and numerous short stories and articles in periodicals such as Esquire, Blue Book, Escapade, The Gent, Manhunt, Guilty Detective Story Magazine, Coronet, Fantastic Universe, Space Science Fiction, and The Saturday Evening Post. Some of his novels had strong sexual content by the standards of the time. The Tormented (1950), a study of nymphomania, was turned down by thirty-four publishers. It eventually sold more than a million copies. Five of his works were made into feature motion pictures.

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a pretty strange little story, yet another dysfunctional family, with a patriarch that builds an isolated mountain retreat (hence the title) and then everyone gets trapped there. For a reader in our era, their plight may seem less dire than for them since we have modern inventions (I won't add spoilers but the solution is obvious). Anyhow the mountain claims its share of the family, and the rest probably won't live very happily at all! [The only reason I read this: during WW II, my dad read a copy while in the Philippines, so I wanted to see how this book might have entertained him]

[Alonzo Church · Rating 1 out of 5]

What does it take to make a bad -- not just a mediocre, or flawed book -- but a 100% stinking lousy I finished it because my Mama told me to finish what you start, but in the name of heaven...book?

Well, this is a good place to find out, because this is the first of my one star reviews.

So why lousy?

* A labored high concept premise -- a group of relatives at a family reunion stranded at mesa top ranch by the slowly going crazy patriarch;

* A long winded, ultimately tedious lead in to the meat of the action.

* Narration confusion. Call me picky, but I hate it when a first person narrator describes events he could not have witnessed, and doesn't source how he knows this stuff. (A first person narrator describng somebody else's sex scene , for example, is a little yucky.)

* An inhumane outlook, which is reactionary even for the mid-40s time frame it is written in. One of the characters is a tragic "nymphomaniac", and she hooks up (once) with the tragic love 'em and leave 'em pilot (he's had 83 girls, 2 suicide attempts amongst the girls, and maybe paid for an abortion or three). That, and the author's drooling descriptions, proves her nymphomania, and she promptly offs herself by jumping off a cliff. The poor girl is also saddled with an annoying artistic type (you find them in 40s books) who has plenty of temperment, and who is in sore need of a wedgie.

* The usual cardboard characters and meh writing.

* Stupid climatological conditions, featuring the daily thunderstorm.

So, sorry I brought this book here to goodreads. It should have been left in the undocumented pile. Even though the lead character does, in some ways, presage the survivalists who turn up in 70s fiction and today's right wing chat boards.