Molly Mendoza has just graduated from Cal Poly with her teaching certificate, ready for marriage to finance Scott Campbell and a life in the yuppie mainstream. That is, until she walks in on Scott with her best friend Shelly. Young and heartbroken, Molly has never really thought about any life outside the one she had planned. During a job fair, Molly had casually filled out an application for Granite Creek Pack Station. Now, after a call from part-owner Don Davidson, Molly is surprised to find herself heading up the Owens valley for summer employment as a cook for Granite Creek, a far cry from settling in with a classroom filled with third-graders. Don is one-third owner along with the curmudgeonly Ike Steel and his veterinarian daughter Joyce. Molly has no time to think about her decision as she is swept off the very next day on a weeklong packing trip along the Golden Trout Trail. And so her adventuresome summer begins. 'Across The High Lonesome' covers one summer with the Granite Creek Pack Station, and is full of adventure, laughs, tears, romance, scuffles, disputes, and ornery mules. Although this book is outside my normal genre of reading, I enjoyed this book every bit as much as I did 'Lonesome Dove' by Larry McMurty. Like 'Lonesome Dove', 'Across The High Lonesome' is a story about people and their capacity for growth, along with their eccentricities. The activities of this closely knit group of folks, Molly, Don, Ike, Joyce, Dwight, Jake, Pete, Tad, Trina, Kate and Bill, Burt, Nancy, Joe, and the entire rest of the gang will keep you reading long into the night, wondering what they have in store for you next. There is almost a soap opera quality here, as there is within any small company that is not held by the restraints of the civilized world. The all-too-human crew blends in with the wild background and make for a lovely picture, and an intriguing tale. Brumfield pulls no punches, this is life at its grittiest, wildest, and most serene. The characters are all too human, fully fleshed and irascible, down to the individual personalities of the animals. The reader can tell, though this is a work of fiction, that the author knows this wilderness and these trails quite well, the injection of realism is too poignant to miss. Do yourself a favor and google images from some of the places mentioned in this book, such as Mono Creek, Summit Lake, Pioneer Basin, and Shepherd's Pass. Brumfield's descriptions of the surrounding landscapes only cement his ability to make the wilderness landscapes bloom through his written words. It's magnificent country! Though there are some early instances of repetitiveness in Brumfield's prose, these are rapidly overlooked by the richness of the tale being told. I really cannot recommend this book highly enough, I wound out being so absorbed by it that I almost wanted to mount a mule and go riding myself. Definitely a 'buy'. Enjoy!
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