For Guthrie the western novel has outlived its time, and like the gunfighter the western author perhaps will fade into the sunset never to slap ink to paper again. For many readers it's just as well. "The Last Valley," however, is proof that although the Old West is dead, the New West lives on—and, in spite of itself, so does the western novel.

In reading this book one recaptures momentarily the westering feeling not just of settling and building Arfive, Montana, a bit before and after World War II, but also the universal spiritual quest for friendship, love, and procreation. The great adversaries to the realization of such a quest are there: prejudice, fear, murder, death by illness, and the ravages of nature. But what one feels most of all is the part which the actual land and the spirit of place play in it all….

The...