The Shining Mountains

The Shining Mountains is a great historical novel that picks up where Amrose's Undaunted Courage leaves off: the opening of the American West after Lewis & Clark. It is a very entertaining book about human strengths and weaknesses, clashes of native american and euro-american cultures, and about true love and ultimate friendship. Even though this book was written in 1948, it has an openness to it that defies the moral norms of the times in which it was written. Van Everly takes some historic liberties, for example making the fictional hero of Matt Morgan the discoverer of South Pass in 1806, when this wagon route to the west was found by Jedediah Smith and others like him not until the 1820's. This does not detract, however, from the compelling storyline of a man pulled between the lure of the Rockies' wilderness and the home and hearth of his true love. As the story develops, Every weaves in encounters with the likes of Lewis & Clark, his brother, the general Roger Clark, expedition hands Colter and Drouillard, and Manuel Lisa who built a fortune on the backs of beavers (literally) and their trappers, to name a few.