Last of the Breed
   Louis L'Amour
  1987 Bantam Books Toronto CA
   ISBN: 0553280422


USAF Major Joe Mack's experimental plane crashes into the Bering Sea & he is captured. When he escapes from a Soviet gulag he must recall the training of his Idaho childhood to flee home across the Siberian wilderness.

This was my introduction to Louis L'Amour's corpus way back when it was published. I was tickled by the idea of a downed American Pilot escaping from a Soviet gulag, being chased by a conniving power-hungry Colonel and his tamed Yakut Indian.

Last of the Breed turns out to be much, much more than that. To start with Colonel Zamatev has meticulously set up a snatch operation and hideaway camp and Joe Mack is just one of a rather important batch of vital scientists and researchers, spirited away from their lives and placed in the waiting gulag to further the Soviet's power.

Turns out that Joe Mack's childhood goes back quite a ways, turns out he's part Sioux, part Cheyenne and doesn't take to captivity at all. Turns out that the only difference between Joe Mack and Alekhin, the Yakut, is that one of the two men has lived his life in freedom.

While the unified Soviet threat is now dated, Louis L'Amour has crafted a breathtaking, absorbing and imaginative tale of one man's exodus across a vast and wonderful terrain under terrible and beautiful weather and startling and diverse communal life. A rousing saga, filled with very useful survival tactics and techniques.

Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly low or defeated, I take this Old Friend down and begin to read, letting L'Amour's simple, interesting writing work its magic and change my vista, open my point-of-view and bring about a soothing that only a good story well told can bring.

One of the best cups of tea of my life.

Louis L'Amour's corpus exceeds 100 titles including the Sackett sagas and some very well known Western movie titles.
(04/12/99)

Rebecca