Seven Rivers West

Hoagland's essays, travel books and novels prove him to be perhaps the finest nature writer in America. His latest novel, an inventive, picaresque romp through the American wilderness around the turn of the century, features the adventures of three charmingly eccentric characters as they make their way from the Dakota plains to the Rockies. They are Cecil, who is in search of a grizzly bear cub to train fora vaudeville act; Charley, a cagey old trapper looking for gold; and Sutton, whose specialized vocation involves jumping from towers into watertubs. On their way they pick up a couple of Indian women and encounter a multitude of wild animals, including bears, wolves, buffalo and moose, not to mention the occasional white man almost equally wild, and finally (or is it a hallucination?) a Bigfoot that makes Cecil forget about catching a bear cub. It's an entertaining tale, rich to bursting with descriptions of wildlife as vivid and authentic as an Audubon painting. First serial rights to Esquire. (September 30)