The Wild Man of the West: A Tale of the Rocky Mountains
1863
The Wild Man of the West: A Tale of the Rocky Mountains
1863
One of the originals. Before the Western genre had a name, R.M. Ballantyne sent a reckless sixteen-year-old into the Rocky Mountains to hunt a legend. March Marston has been raised on the edge of the wilderness by an independent-minded mother, trained by trappers and the harsh land itself. When a party of seasoned mountain men heads into the peaks searching for the fabled Wild Man, March insists on joining them. What follows is a journey into the unknown, where the real danger might not be the legend they're tracking but the brutal landscape and the men who haunt it. Written in 1863 by a Scottish author who knew the frontier intimately, this novel invented the adventure tale for generations of readers hungry for stories of the American West. It endures because it captures something true about the frontier's pull: the longing to test yourself against the untamed, to discover what lies beyond the next ridge.
