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B o o k R e v ie w s 221 Savage Mountain: A Novel of the Yosemite. By Sean Belanger. New York: U SA Books, 2002. 189 pages, $13.00. Reviewed by Scott Herring University of California, Davis Few novels have been written about the national parks. The parks have inspired nonfiction commentary from the start (John Muir made a career of it), and one can think of novels that constitute exceptions: the murder mysteries of Nevada Barr, say, or Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House (1925), partly set in a fictionalized Mesa Verde. These gorgeous places otherwise seem to repulse the novelist, perhaps because a national park is a place where natural art makes literary art seem futile. This scarcity makes Savage Mountain: A Novel of the Yosemite a rare thing, even though the story concerns the Yosemite tribe more than it does the place. Its protagonist is Jim Wallace, a mountain man and trader who has married into all the native tribes of the Sierra; his multiple wives enable him to do busi­ ness more comfortably than he otherwise could. This business leads him, in the course of normal operations, to swindle the Ahwahneechee and their leader, Tenaya. Theirs is the last native group to occupy what would become Yosemite National Park, and, here, the novel mingles with historical reality (those who have visited Yosemite will have heard ofTenaya Lake, north of the famous val­ ley). The swindle is ultimately discovered by Tenaya’s son, and it precipitates the war that ends with Tenaya’s band confined to a reservation. Tenaya himself breaks out and, with Jim in pursuit, crosses the Sierra in a final, epic ride. The novel is uneven. It needs about two more passes by a proofreader; in places, the typos and bad line breaks are dense. In addition, the story jumps from person to person and place to place in a manner that is often confusing. Characters move around primitive California with a speed and nonchalance that requires explanation. No explanation is forthcoming though because Belanger has really taken on too much. The book is relatively short but tends to spread itself unnecessarily thin. The story is too brief to fully develop more than a handful of characters, and we have more than a handful. Consequently, people do things for unexplained reasons, and what would be major events in their lives provoke surprisingly casual responses. For instance, Jim’s partner is Doug O’Leary, a half-mad survivor of the Donner Party, and Doug is more trouble to his creator than he is worth. Doug is nearly killed by a grizzly (he in turn kills the bear with a “cutlass,” an unfor­ tunate word choice, one that appears often and that, authentic or not, had me thinking only of the Disneyland ride “The Pirates of the Caribbean”). He forgets the grizzly attack immediately; it just kind of slips his mind. He is then captured by the Ahwahneechee and beaten almost to death, but this experi­ ence, too, doesn’t amount to much. Doug could simply have been removed from the story and the space devoted to Jim and Tenaya. 2 2 2 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L it e r a t u r e S u m m e r 2 0 0 5 Because therein lies the novel’s strength. A number of scenes are executed with real skill, all involving Jim, Tenaya, or Jim and Tenaya together. Jim is the most well-rounded character in the book, a creature of his time and place who nevertheless exhibits some moral complexity. Tenaya himself is a puzzle—until the end, when Belanger narrates the conclusion of his story in a scene of genu­ ine power. It is worth waiting for, and worth the effort to reach. Land That Moves, Land That Stands Still. By Kent Nelson. New York: Viking, 2003. 357 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by Diane D. Quantic Wichita State University, Kansas In Land That Moves, Land That Stands Still, Kent Nelson weaves together the lives offour people who, for different reasons, are committed to the land, in particular the...

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