Malcolm Brooks

In this sprawling saga, protagonist Catherine Lemay, a novice archeologist, travels from New York to Montana to evaluate if there is anything of historical significance in the area targeted for flooding to create a hydroelectric dam. The year is 1956. She has one summer to investigate a vast swath of canyon. She is ill-equipped to handle such a massive task. Her guide appears to be more interested in finding wild horses than helping with her assignment. She enlists the assistance of a young Crow woman. She meets a reclusive horseman and WWII veteran. We learn their backstories via flashbacks.

Brooks does an excellent job of describing the harsh Montana landscape, the wild bands of horses, and the perils of the plains. He sets up the opposing forces – historic preservation versus industrialization, human against nature, a greenhorn woman in a macho environment. The writing is expressive, in passages such as:

“The animal flared like a cobra, lips curling from yellow teeth as crooked as the fingers of a witch. She jumped back with her breath in her throat. The horse shook its head and stamped a hoof. This was no regular horse but a demon horse, garish and primeval with symbols in yellow and red, rings around one eye and bands up its legs and the splayed print of a human hand plastered on a flank. She fought to reject the notion she’d come face-to-face with the maniacal ghost of a war pony.”

It is an ambitious novel, maybe a bit too ambitious. It is slow in developing, where not much happens for long stretches. It involves a typical star-crossed romance. While it has its good points and drawbacks, I feel the was worth my time and I would read another by this author.

3.5
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