The Revenant by Michael Punke

Paperback:  The Revenant (2015) is a thrilling tale of betrayal, envy, the power of obsession and revenge set against the nineteenth-century American frontier and the astonishing story of real-life trapper and frontiersman Hugh Glass.  It also tells a story of nearly unimaginable human endurance over 3000 miles of uncharted American wilderness, spanning what is today the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska.

The year is 1823, and the trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life.

36-year-old Hugh Glass is among the company's finest men, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker but when a scouting mission into perilous, unexplored territory puts him face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive.

Two company men - John Fitzgerald, a ruthless mercenary, and young Jim Bridger, the future "King of the Mountain Men" - are dispatched to stay behind and tend to Glass before he dies.

When Indians approach their camp, the men abandon him instead.  Worse yet, they rob the wounded man of his weapons and tools - the very things that might have given him a chance on his own.

Deserted, defenseless, and furious, Glass vows his survival.

And is driven to survive by one desire:  revenge. 

With shocking grit and determination, Glass sets out, crawling at first, across hundreds of miles of uncharted American frontier, surviving against all odds, in vengeful pursuit of his ignominious betrayers.

Based on a true story, The Revenant is a remarkable tale of the human will and a spellbinding tale of heroism and obsessive retribution.  It was adapted as a screenplay for a film released in December 2015, directed by Alejandro G Iñárritu and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.

About the author:  A former partner in a Washington law firm, Michael Punke serves as the U.S. Ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.  He has also served on the White House National Security Council staff and on Capitol Hill.  He was formerly the history correspondent for Montana Quarterly and an adjunct professor at the University of Montana.  He is the author of Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917 (2006) - a finalist for the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award - and Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West (2007).  His family home is in Montana.

Rating:  Highly recommended read.