The Brave by Nicholas Evans

This is the gentleman who wrote The Horse Whisperer. I heard him interviewed recently on NPR. He is an Englishman and has to have dialysis after nearly dying of eating poisonous mushrooms while on a family hike. Not that this relevant to his new novel, The Brave.

This book superficially skimmed too many themes: Hollywood in the early 1960s; boarding schools in England; civilian deaths in Iraq; the Blackfeet of Montana all woven into significant family dramas and traumas. Still, I will always love reading a novel set in Montana, especially along the eastern Rocky Mountain Front which rises up from the prairies in an awesome wondrous way. Virginia was a little girl when she first saw these mountains. We were driving west on highway 2 and she suddenly and seriously asked in the way of children: "Where's the door?"

Nicholas Evans writes well enough and this story had its moments; just not a lot of depth. Still, if you liked his other books (The Smoke Jumper, The Loop, The Divide and The Horse Whisperer), you will probably like it well enough.