The Burning Hills: A Novel

This book was also made into a movie, and I didn't like the movie any better than I did the book. The rear cover of the edition I have says, "Louis L'Amour's blazing novel about a defiant man's fight for survival" and that just about sums it up. Trace Jordan is not a character I could have much sympathy for; nor the situations in which he found himself. Passable book only to have all of L'Amour's work.

I've always liked this particular story by L'Amour because I like Maria Cristina so much. She's a strong woman, proud and independent. Jordan teases her a little, saying that he needs to boss her around a little, but no one is going to boss Maria Cristina unless she lets them! She's different from the usual women in L'Amour's books, too, because she is Mexican, living in the area right around the Mexico/USA border. I loved the side issue of how she and her family were managing to survive in a changing and challenging world. The story is classic L'Amour: Jordan is being pursued by riders from a nearby ranch. Some of them stole the horses he and his partner had caught and were breaking, and killed the partner as well. Jordan catches up with them, finds the ranch owner and some riders and accuses them of stealing his horses and the usual western free-for-all happens. As with all of his books, though, you'll like this one if you like the others. If you don't or you don't like western actions books, you probably won't like this one.

This book and all those that Louis L'Amour wrote are remarkable. The passionate abandon western films they find quickly fades in light of the writings of this herald the far west. L'Amour is a great author of the classic genre. I have read and reread all his books.

THE BURNING HILLS was released in August, 1956, after both HONDO and GUNS OF THE TIMBERLANDS and offers excellent example of the early western writings of Louis L'Amour. Yet, for me, the book remains one of the better novels Mr. L'Amour wrote. The main protagonist, Trace Jordan, a horse trapper has been forced to kill a man. Suffering an incapacitating wound and hunted by a posse including an able tracker, Trace Jordan requires the essential help and care of the woman named Maria Cristina. She is a wonderful central female character, one as untamed as any in western literature, and one of the better ones Louis L'Amour ever brought to life. Another strong character in this book is Jacob Lantz, a "Dutch-Indian" tracker who could and did trail renegade Apaches successfully. A man who truly enjoyed his work very much, and his professionalism equaled his enjoyment. Jacob was the son of a Dutch trader, his mother a Ute squaw, and it was stated Lantz tracked with his "mind as well as his senses". Trace Jordan is both a wounded and trapped man and only the mercy of Maria Christina can help save him--for Jacob Lantz certainly means not to. A movie based on this book was later made too but as usual it fell far short of reaching the drama and tension present in Louis L'Amour's written novel. Should you enjoy Louis L'Amour books, especially early L'Amour books, consider this short book as it will offer a few hours of solid reading. And after this one you only have 110 or so books of his left to read! Though Louis L'Amour died in June, 1988, he left us many worthy books to read and re-read. Grab one pardner while they are yet available. Semper Fi.

Western literature has an undeniable charm and represents a unique creation in the world. Let me get rid of the radical rejection of Indians as blood craving and war monging individuals with no individuality. Native Americans are rejected into and by such clichés. The land grabbing thieves that the Europeans were are calling wolf when the original landowners start defending their property. But western literature goes a lot farther than that. It shows an essential side of humanity : the desire to go beyond limits, to force the future, to create a new world out of nothing, or out of not much, to curb nature to human needs and projects, and Indians are only part of that nature. It also shows how human feelings are reduced to some basics that can be the foundations of a more complex construction, but that are most of the time the essential part of that construction that never gets off the ground. Humanity living within its basic needs. Love is thus reduced to the need to be needed and the need to be protected along with the need to need and the need to protect. This is simple but essential. We can maybe regret that all the romanticism and the elaborate feelings that love implies are not included in the western recipe but the basic sentiments of need-beneeded and protect-beprotected are an essential human attitude that shows how man and woman can only survive and create the future in difficult situation because that is their destiny. It is this fundamental human destiny to conquer the world and transform it which is essential in western literature. Then what do we do when these values are projected into modern life ? That's a completely different question that requires a lot of thinking and much discussing. Western literature is a central melting pot from which the iron of human endeavor can be produced and refined.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU