The Revenant

"Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath:

for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

Rom. 12:19

I love a good revenge story. I think a lot of people do. I think it makes us feel better when the bad guys get their just rewards and when its at the hands of the good guys, all the better. It is what makes books like Moby Dick, and Terentino movies so popular. It makes us feel better to see that someone is seeing justice served in a world that seems to be so very unjust. So when I stumbled across The Revenant, by Michael Punke, I jumped at the chance to read it. No just a revenge story set in the west, with trappers and traders and bears, but a revenge story based on the life of a person who lived, and an extremely interesting person at that. 

The Revenant tells the story of mountain man Hugh Glass, who was mauled by a grizzly bear and then abandoned and robbed by his comrades. He then worked his way back to civilization, healed, and went back into the wilderness to find them and settle the score (historically, these things really happened). He had an extremely interesting life, starting out as a sailor, then an involuntary pirate, and then a fur trapper. It seems odd that this is the first tall tale story I've seen told of him, though there are several non-fiction books that tell the tail.

I really liked this book. The story is fascinating, and the author did a very good job describing what the Rocky mountains were like in the 1820's from the weather to the interactions with the several indigenous tribes (touching on the racism and vaguely on the beginnings of the wars that would expand to that part of the continent later in the century).  I really liked the writing. It was blunt and concise, but also filled with wonderful little bits of poetic writing when talking about the landscape and the wild life that lived there: the wolves and the buffalo. Even the way he talks about how the "colder weather settled into Glass's wounds the way a storm creeps its way up a mountain valley" waxes poetic. I feel like this style of writing reflects how Glass (or maybe even the author) felt about the world. Men are corrupt and blunt, yet nature is innocent, and beautiful in its untamed state. 

This book was wonderful. I highly recommend reading it, especially before the movie starring Leo DiCaprio comes out later this year. It looks particularly hair raising and awesome though it seems to focus more on the action, which is fairly sparse in the book. Read it before you see it!