Books Take Readers Into Great Outdoors New Novels Put Twist Of Suspense In The Hunt

New adventures have arrived for hunters and anglers looking for a respite from the relentless barrage of how-to books.

Here’s a sampling of several new works ranging from intense to delightfully frivolous.

“The Purification Ceremony,” by Mark T. Sullivan (Avon Books, $24.)

“All of nature’s creatures are murderers,” the author observes in his first thriller novel. “We must murder to live. It’s the law of the forest.”

In an interview, Sullivan said he’s a passionate hunter of white-tailed deer. “I live for it,” he said. His book, however, finds hunters dying at their sport, the victims of a ghost-like predator who kills them one by one as though they were game.

This book has twists and suspense that raise it to the top level of storytelling.

The main character is a woman, Diana Jackman, an environmental software writer and a deer hunter. As the story opens, she’s thinking of herself as Little Crow, the name her Native American family gave her as a child.

As the story unfolds in the backwoods of British Columbia, she reaches to the ultimate skills and senses of tracking and survival.

The writing quality is excellent, and the suspense is unforgiving.

“Hooked on Little Goose,” by Ed Muzatko (Little Goose Publishing, $10).

The cat’s out of the bag with this self-published book.

Authors have tried for years to paint magic about steelhead fishing, honoring an unwritten code to suppress the sport’s shameful little faults.

This book, however, quite accurately depicts the humor, rumor, rudeness and lies is hard to define.

The characters in this book are real people, about as refined as sucker bait. These are the bank fishermen you see congregating at Little Goose Dam hoping they can take advantage of a poor steelhead confused by the fish ladder.

In a strange, rancid sort of way, the reader will find some affection for the Little Goose Gang, including Lacrosse Fats, a large man standing 6-5 and weighing roughly 300 pounds when fully bundled in his snowmobile suit tending his rod.

You’ll learn about chunky coffee and passing gas and other things normal steelhead anglers know intimately but would never divulge This is not bedtime reading for the kids. It’s serious B.S.

“Snowbound,” by Ladd Hamilton (Washington State University Press, $19.95).

“Snowbound” may be the only story in which an enlarged prostate plays a pivotal part in the plot.

Men of a certain age will feel the pain of Charles Colegate, a 52-year-old camp cook for a North Idaho hunting party in the fall of 1893.

The deeper the hunters went into the Bitterroot Mountains, the sicker Colegate became because of a blocked urinary tract. Then, the party became trapped by an early snow.

The book tells the true story of the hunters who were torn between trying to help a dying man and saving themselves.

Hamilton weaves the documented facts into a captivating re-creation of the harrowing story. The tale revives social and ethical questions that are as thought-provoking today as they were for the editorial writers a century ago.

Hamilton, a retired editor and columnist for the Lewiston Morning Tribune, knows a good story. And while being true to the historical record, he doesn’t let it interfere with the action. He acknowledges up front where he has created dialogue, assumed situations and added a couple of minor fictional bit players. The main characters are real, based on accounts from the time.

The party was led by 27-year-old Will Carlin, a West Point graduate from Buffalo, N.Y., whose father was the general in command of the Vancouver Barracks on the Columbia River near the Washington state coast.

With Carlin were his 20-year-old brother-in-law and a 28-year-old friend, both from New York. They were accompanied by a local guide and Colegate, the cook.

Carlin’s Army ties figured in the rescue attempts that were made to save the general’s son. The social distinctions between the New Yorkers and the locals also became significant when life and death decisions had to be made.

Not all made it out alive.

The story is told from the survivors’ point of view. But their explanations were met with a skepticism that lingers after all these years.

Hamilton’s descriptions of the Lolo Trail and the Lochsa River make it seem as if he were there as the snow got deeper, as the hunters tried to raft out, as their food ran out and as they walked to exhaustion.The wilderness became a stage where bad luck and bad decisions forced the hunters to test their humanity.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 color)

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: SEASON’S READINGS Auntie’s Bookstore has scheduled several authors this month to read from books of interest to hunters and anglers. The readings begin at 7:30 p.m. “Snowbound,” by Ladd Hamilton, Oct. 16. “Learning to Talk Bear,” by Rolland Cheek, Oct. 17. “Hooked on Little Goose,” by Ed Muzatko, Oct. 27. “Railroads and Clearcuts,” by Dr. John Osborn, Oct. 28.

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Rich Landers Outdoors editor Doug Esser of the Associated Press contributed to this story.