Angels of Light

Set in beautiful Yosemite Valley, Long's first novel explores the passions and values of hard-core mountain climbers, here a band of mavericks living in tents or under National Park benches in Camp Site Four. When a ton and a half of marijuana is discovered in a plane downed in a mountain lake, the group of climbers, including veteran John Dog Coloradas, ascends to claim the bounty. Their score makes national headlines, along with pictures of the pilot's body. But bad fortune haunts the climbers afterward: young Tucker, the purest and best among them, takes a mysterious, fatal fall after an extraordinary climb; Bullseye, camp sage and '60s holdover, is found battered and broken at the bottom of a cliff; the camp bully, Kresinski, becomes even nastier. Finally, John returns to the lake with Kresinski to confront the danger stalking the climbers and the destructive forces within himself. Long explores the mythic properties of climbing and the situation of essentially solitary men brought together in a common pursuit. Climbers will relish this rapturous and penetrating, slightly macho paean to their passion. Other readers may wish Long, author of Outlaw: The Saga of Claude Dallas, had strayed less often from the track of his story. (June)