Dear Daniel,By way of prologue, The Mountain Story opens with this letter – penned by Wolf Truly to his son as he departs for college – which explains that what follows is Wolf's long withheld account of what happened up on the mountain; a story that young Danny had only vague information about; a story that even Danny's mother had never fully heard. There's genius in this opening: not only do we instantly know that not everyone survived this ordeal, but also, if learning the story is going to change Danny's life, too, just what did Wolf get up to on that mountain? The tension that this creates made for a suspenseful and enjoyable read.
A person has to have lived a little to appreciate a survival story. That's what I've always said, and I promised that when you were old enough, I'd tell you mine. It's no tale for a child, but you're not a child anymore. You're older now than I was when I got lost in the mountain wilderness.
Five days in the freezing cold without food or water or shelter. You know that part, and you know that I was with three strangers, and that not everyone survived. What happened up there changed my life, Danny. Hearing the story is going to change yours.
The reader gets the impression that Wolf never told his son much about himself before and we quickly learn that Wolf's was not a happy childhood: a dead mother, criminal father, and an unhappy uprooting as they moved from Michigan to a trailer park in the California desert – called “Tin Town” – that sat in the shadow of an unnamed mountain. Wolf alternates between his survival story and his personal history, and both are equally compelling – just as we're eager to learn which of the strangers is going to die, we're eager to learn more about Wolf; just what brought him to hike alone on the mountain that fateful day? And we don't just wonder who dies but how: will it be a reaction to a bee sting, or will someone unwittingly walk off a cliff, or will it be the coyotes, the mountain lions, the dehydration, the cold? There is so much danger, without seeming gratuitous, that I honestly had no idea who wouldn't be making it down alive until it happened.
Author Lori Lansens writes in spare prose here, cataloguing the facts of a life in the same way that she notes the botanical and geological variety of the mountain, but even though the writing was never florid, I'm left remembering so many vivid scenes; so much emotion. And although there may be some twists towards the end, they weren't cheap tricks – everything is set up along the way. That's all I'm going to say – because any spoilers would be a shame for this story – and will end as Wolf did his letter to his son:
Remember our family motto – there will be sway.Oh, but one small complaint: I read the edition with a yellow canteen on the front, and if it's important in the story that everyone scratched their names into the yellow enamel coating, why use a picture of a tin canteen with a yellow canvas covering? Details matter!
