Brules

In 1916, civil engineering student Steven Cartwright plays hooky from his father's fall cattle drive to visit Cat Brules, a mysterious Colorado mountain man rumored to be a thief and a murderer. The friendship between the boy and this relic of the rapidly disappearing frontier provides a frame for this fluid first novel, as Brules tells Steven the story of his life over a series of nights around the campfire. After a drive down the Chisholm Trail in 1867, Brules killed his trail boss in a fight over a Hays City, Kans., prostitute named Michelle. Fleeing town, the pair were captured by Comanches; Brules escaped, but Michelle was tortured and killed, setting her lover on a one-man vendetta against the Indians. Brules gradually overcomes his hatred, eventually marrying a Native American. The author, an aviation pioneer who wrote a nonfiction study of the Wright Brothers, Kill Devil Hill , clearly knows and loves the land and history of the American West. References to numerous actual people and events (Butch Cassidy, General Crook, the Fetterman massacre) add verisimilitude to his story. Although overly long and tending to drag in spots, this expansive novel will remind some readers of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove . ( July )