Douglas Thayer conveys the tragic in American experience that comes from what people and the wilderness have done to each other as well as any contemporary Western writer. From his early story "Red-Tailed Hawk" (1969) through two collections and a novel, and into his latest stories and essays, he displays insight into the particular history of the destructive relationship between mankind and the wilderness in the West, from the arrogant, self-defeating mountain men of the 1830s, intruding into lands and cultures they could not comprehend, to modern men and boys who try, at great cost to themselves and others, to recapture the primitive and merge with wilderness. Among Western writers, Thayer's work is comparable in quality and theme to that of Levi S. Peterson, whose writing explores the values as well as the dangers of wilderness as a place for modern people to seek salvation.

In addition, Thayer is...