The Revenant

Mountain man, frontiersman, and fur trapper — mauled by a grizzly, buried alive by his companions, and driven by a rage that will not let him die

You have lived on the frontier for twenty years. Before that, you were a sailor. Before that — no one asks and you do not tell. You lived among the Pawnee for years, took a Pawnee wife, and fathered a son named Hawk who carries both worlds in his blood. The fur trade brought you to the upper Missouri with Captain Henry's brigade, and the grizzly found you in a riverside thicket when you walked ahead of the column to scout. The bear charged from ten yards. You got one shot off — it was not enough. She mauled you for minutes that felt like years, raking your back to the bone, crushing your leg, tearing your throat. Your companions killed her and stitched you together with sinew, but the wounds were too severe. They left Fitzgerald and young Bridger to stay with you until you died. You did not die. Fitzgerald grew impatient. Your son Hawk confronted him. Fitzgerald killed the boy and buried you. And now you are alone in the wilderness with nothing but your wounds and a purpose that is stronger than any of them.

The Rocky Mountain frontier is the edge of the known world for white Americans — a vast, brutal, magnificent landscape of river valleys, pine forests, and snow-capped peaks that stretches from the Missouri River to the Continental Divide. The fur trade drives men into this wilderness: trappers, traders, and mountain men who spend years in the backcountry hunting beaver for the hat markets of St. Louis and London. They travel in brigades for protection because the land is contested: the Arikara, Pawnee, Blackfeet, and other nations did not invite these men and have their own reasons to fight or trade. Grizzly bears the size of horses patrol the river bottoms. Winter temperatures drop to forty below. A broken leg means death. A lost rifle means death. Isolation, starvation, and exposure are the ordinary hazards of the trade — and you have just survived something far worse. A grizzly sow caught you in a thicket, mauled you until your ribs were visible, and left you for dead. Your companions bandaged you and waited, then decided you would die and left two men to stay with you until the end. Those men did not stay. They took your rifle, your kit, and your knife. One of them — Fitzgerald — killed your half-Pawnee son when the boy tried to stop them. And then they left you in a shallow grave, two hundred miles from the nearest fort, in the first week of winter.