Backbone of the World

Backbone of the World

By Edward Louis Henry

484 pages, softcover: $29.95

ISBN 1-4241-2504-9

Reviewed by Mike Nesbitt

This book, Backbone of the World by Edward Louis Henry, is a novel, a tale that follows history quite closely but is seen through the eyes of one Temple Buck, a fictitious character who joins Ashley’s outing during the first two years of the Rocky Mountain fur trade (1822–1824) and goes up the Missouri on a keel boat. This is a novel, yes, but it is so absorbing that you’ll completely forget that it isn’t absolute fact.

Henry achieves this blurring of reality by including several figures from history, such as Mike Fink, Hugh Glass, Jim Bridger, Carpenter, Talbot, Fitzgerald, plus many others and going right along with them as those factual characters from history are seen doing just what made them so well remembered. None of those “real” people are seen doing anything in this tale that has been made up, however some of the finer details and things like their conversations might be.

I started reading this book by reading the Publisher’s Preface. Even within those two and a half pages, I was really “taken.” The end of the preface concludes with the publisher’s name and the date, 1828. That’s when I realized that the preface was fictional as well.

The author, Edward Louis Henry, is a buckskinner and a fur trade historian. He is also known as “Poredevil.” When I told him how taken I was while reading the Publisher’s Preface, he told me that where this book was started. Henry wrote the Publisher’s Preface first, and that was where the basis and direction of this book was founded.

Let me say that, as this review is written, I have not finished reading Backbone of the World. However, I am over halfway through it, and that’s certainly puts me far enough into it to be able to recommend it.

While this book only deals with the first two years of the Rocky Mountain fur trade, Henry will be following it very soon with a second volume, titled Free Men. That second volume takes place in the years 1824 through 1826. I hope to tell you more about Free Men soon. Two more volumes are planned to follow Free Men. Details about those coming volumes are not available at this time.

I recommend Backbone of the World very highly. I haven’t enjoyed a novel about the fur trade as much as this one in quite a while.

Orders for Backbone of the World can be emailed to <publishamerica.com/shopping>. The retail price is $29.95 plus $3.00 shipping and handling. For mail orders, write: PublishAmerica, Box 151, Frederick MD 21705.