["The Way West"] is the story of the early emigrant trek to Oregon, told nobly and without melodrama. In a way it is a sequel to Mr. Guthrie's remarkable first novel, "The Big Sky," his tale of the mountain men. One of the chief characters of that is a hero of this. The two have also in continuum Mr. Guthrie's extraordinary realization of the Northwestern country, the Plains and the northern Rockies and their rivers and weathers and indigenous life; and of history as an organic process molding men's characters, one way or another. But "The Way West" is complete enough in itself, with a beginning at Independence, Mo., the spring of 1846, and an end on the Columbia River that autumn; and if it is not as big a book as "The Big Sky" it is a better novel. Its pattern of character is more various, more human...