(Drivebycuriosity) - I just finished the "The Revenant. A Novel of Revenge" by Michael Punke, published 2002 ( amazon). The novel was used for the same named breath taking movie with Leonardo di Caprio as lead character, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu.
It seems that the author wrote the novel for the cinema and used an old and proven recipe: A man was left for dead, betrayed and robbed. He struggles for survival under extreme & vicious conditions and seeks revenge.
The novel is set in the wilderness of the still unexplored American West in the early 19th century and describes the gritty live of fur trappers - the hunters & gatherers of Americas pioneer phase. The frequent action scenes are elaborately depicted although not really believable - and the miraculous recovery reads like a fairy tale (with greetings from the Count of Monte Cristo). It´s also a problem that the author describes the natives, called Indians, as highly aggressive and murderous, which seems racist to me.
I learned that the economy in this region was based on beaver furs, which were apparently highly popular in Europe and collected high prices. Successful fur trappers & traders could become wealthy. There were a lot competing corporations who employed troops of trappers and send them into the wilderness in order to collect the valuable furs. Some investors set their money on trapper corporations with a good reputations and forts were constructed in the wilderness as trading posts and shelters. The animal skins were transported on water ways, mainly the Missouri River and the Mississippi, to New Orleans, then the economic and cultural center of the region.
The plot is based on a poem from 1915, "The Song of Hugh Glass", which already was used in the 1971 film "The Man in the Wilderness" ( wikipedia). I prefer the 2015 movie version because of the outstanding cinematography and the amazing performances by Leonardo DiCaprio & Tom Hardy (imdb ).
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