The Revenant by Michael Punke

Reviewed by Ben 

You may recognize "The Revenant" as the 2015 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy. However in 2002 Michael Punke wrote a novel-of the same name-based on the true survival story of American frontiersman Hugh Glass. The book is a perfectly-paced, well-researched, engrossing story of survival and persistence that celebrates the vast beauty of the American frontier in the 1820s.

 Hugh Glass was a hunter and scout for a fur trapping company seeking to establish a trade route on The Grand River. Glass was savagely mauled by a grizzly bear and presumed to be dying by the members of his fur trapping party. When the group decided it was time to move on, two men-John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger-were left behind to tend to the injured Glass, helping him rejoin the main group should he recover or giving Glass a proper burial should he perish, the latter of which seemed imminent. Fearing hostile Arikara Indians who were seen patrolling nearby, Fitzgerald and Bridger abandoned Glass, leaving him for dead, but not before taking his knife and cherished Anstadt rifle. Miraculously, Glass recovers and sets out on an agonizing journey to settle the score with the two men who left him wounded and alone in the wilderness, with no gun or knife with which to provide for or defend himself. 

 It may be a trite expression, but I found The Revenant to be a "real page-turner." I can't help but resort to this tired expression because the book earns that title so handily. The story runs at an almost-perfect pace, with the action moving quickly in dangerous situations and slowing down as Glass inches his way cross the vast American west. This varied tempo accentuates the agonizing scale of the task that laid ahead of Glass while also demonstrating how quickly things can go wrong when one is alone in the wilderness without the weapons and tools needed to even the odds against hostile people, wildlife and the landscape itself. Punke kept his novel at just the right length: around 230 pages. His book is long enough to engross the reader and impart the sense that Glass went through a real odyssey. 

However at no point did I feel bogged down in unnecessary scenes or chapters. Every scene served a purpose. Even the procedural parts worked, like when the author describes Glass's attempts to trap small animals or the grisly task of making "bull boats" out of tree branches and the remains of freshly-killed buffalo. This was not mere exposition or scene-establishing. Punke uses these scenes to immerse the reader into Glass's situation, which required grit, determination and know-how just for existence.

I highly recommend The Revenant. Also, if you haven't, watch the movie after finishing the book. 

 

Note:  We're delighted to present the first review by Ben, our newest staff member.  We hope to beg, plead, and cajole him into writing more for us.