Indie Next Pick for July Amazon Best of the Month Apple Best of the Month AbsorbingWinningThe many layers in The Oregon Trail are linked by Mr Bucks voice which is alert and unpretentious in a manner that put me in mind of Bill Brysons comic tone in A Walk in the Woods Dwight Garner The New York TimesAn epic account of traveling the length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned wayin a covered wagon with a team of mules an audacious journey that hasnt been attempted in a centurywhich also chronicles the rich history of the trail the people who made the migration and its significance to the country Spanning two thousand miles and traversing six states from Missouri to the Pacific coast the Oregon Trail is the route that made America In the fifteen years before the Civil War when pioneers used the trail to emigrate Westscholars still regard this as the largest land migration in historyit united the coasts doubled the size of the country and laid the groundwork for the railroads Today amazingly the trail is all but forgotten Rinker Buck is no stranger to grand adventures His first travel narrative Flight of Passage was hailed by The New Yorker as a funny cocky gem of a book and with The Oregon Trail he brings the most important route in American history back to glorious and vibrant life Traveling from St Joseph Missouri to Baker City Oregon over the course of four months Buck is accompanied by three cantankerous mules his boisterous brother Nick and an incurably filthy Jack Russell terrier named Olive Oyl Along the way they dodge thunderstorms in Nebraska chase runaway mules across the Wyoming plains scout more than five hundred miles of nearly vanished trail on foot cross the Rockies and make desperate fifty-mile forced marches for water The Buck brothers repair so many broken wheels and axels that they nearly reinvent the art of wagon travel itself They also must reckon with the ghost of their father an eccentric yet loveable dreamer whose memory inspired their journey across the plains and whose premature death many years earlier has haunted them both ever since But The Oregon Trail is much more than an epic adventure It is also a lively and essential work of history that shatters the comforting myths about the trail years passed down by generations of Americans Buck introduces readers to the largely forgotten roles played by trailblazing evangelists friendly Indian tribes female pioneers bumbling US Army cavalrymen and the scam artists who flocked to the frontier to fleece the overland emigrants Generous portions of the book are devoted to the history of old and appealing things like the mule and the wagon We also learn how the trail accelerated American economic development Most arresting perhaps are the stories of the pioneers themselvesordinary families whose extraordinary courage and sacrifice made this country what it became At once a majestic journey across the West a significant work of history and a moving personal saga The Oregon Trail draws readers into the journey of a lifetime It is a wildly ambitious work of nonfiction from a true American original It is a book with a heart as big as the country it crosses.
