A review by slimikin
North to the Rails by Louis L'Amour

4.0

After reading North to the Rails, I now understand perfectly why Louis L’Amour is so beloved. His portrait of life in the West has such richness, filled with casual, familiar detail about the land---its rivers, stands of timber and scrub, how the cycles of seasons and weather change it. The people populating that land are just as vivid: hard and rough, loyal or treacherous, quick to kindness or cruelty, standing on principles of courage and determination. And the story that takes place in this West has a kind of grandeur. L’Amour doesn’t ignore the dangers, but his hero, Tom Chantry, meets them with spirit, and the obstacles Chantry encounters allow the reader to share his growing understanding of what a frontier, with all its attendant lawlessness, requires of a settler.