This is a novella, so it did not take long to read. I saw the movie that this was based on and thought it was interesting. A little bleak, but interesting. Usually, novels provide for more material than is needed for a full-length movie, so some parts usually have to be left out. This, being a novella, I expected, should have been just like the movie. Nope. Large portions were left out or changed completely.
The main character, who goes by his last name, Grainier, starts life out with a different name that he no longer remembers. His parents died very early in his life, when he about six years old, and he was sent by train to live with another family who always gave him somewhat conflicting stories about his original family. He wasn’t even sure where he came from. It may have been Canada, but it could have been Utah. The story is set in the early 1900’s
As a young adult, in 1917 Grainier, works in the timber and railroad industry. He usually worked one end of a two-man saw, felling trees all day and sleeping in a tent. The trees were either shipped off by rail to somewhere else for sale, or used to build bridges for the railway that was being extended nearby. The work is pretty brutal, but it is seasonal. At the end of every season, Grainier, comes back to Idaho, the place he calls home as an adult. He returns at the end of every season with several hundred dollars. Likely a fair amount of money for the time. He lives in a tent and eats the food provided by the logging company, so he has almost no expenses when he is working.
There is really no mention of Grainier’s adoptive family when he is an adult. He appears to have lost all connection with them. He spends his seasons off from timber work doing odd jobs around the small town of Bonner’s Ferry and spends his winters there lodging wherever is available.
Grainier does not seem especially religious, but his does tend to go to the local church when he is in town for the winter. He is also not particularly social, but he does strike up with a young woman named Gladys after church one Sunday. At this point Grainier is about 30 years old. At the time, this was likely a little old to start a family, but this is what he does. He marries Gladys and uses the money he saved from his seasons working the timber to buy an acre of land outside of town. He and Gladys build a small cabin on it and Gladys lives there full-time, but Grainier still goes off to work during the timber season. A short time late they have a baby girl named Kate. They have a wonderful life for a couple of years, but Gladys definitely does not enjoy having to care for a baby in an isolated cabin by herself for months on end while Grainier works far away from home. Times are tough so they make it work, but Grainier makes plans to save money and find a way to work closer to home.
At the end of one logging season, as Grainier makes his way home by train, he sees immense smoke and flames coming from the outskirts of Bonner’s Ferry. A fire has consumed most of the land around town, including the land his cabin was on. Grainier looks everywhere and asks everyone he can on the whereabouts of his family, but finds out nothing. He finds his old homestead, where just the woodburning stove remains. Heartbroken, Grainier spends his days and nights at the site of his cabin in the hopes that someone will return. Eventually, Grainier rebuilds the cabin on the same site as the old one.
One night, an old mongrel dog appears and serves as his off and on companion. The dog mostly remains, but does leave on occasion for days on end. Other than a Kootenai Indian named Bob, Grainier has almost no social interaction when he is not working the timber season. Bob appears in both the novella and the film version of the story, but in the film he takes care of Grainier while he is mourning at his burnt-out cabin site. In the novella, he plays a smaller part as just a casual companion who is one day run over by several trains after he passes out drunk on the tracks. Bob doesn’t ever drink, but on this one occasion, he was tricked into drinking by some ranch hands.
This leaves Grainier with just his red mongrel dog. The movie introduces a women with a love for the outdoors to the story, but she is absent from the book. Grainier work several more timber seasons and spends his winters alone in his cabin, sometimes dreaming or having hallucinating of his wife or daughter. One vision is that his wife sees the oncoming fire and begins gathering baby Kate and some belongings and begins to flee the cabin. In the scurry, Gladys falls and tumbles down an embankment, breaking her back. She sees the flames consuming everything, and shortly before she dies she sends the baby Kate towards the edge of the river in the hopes that at least she will survive.
Later, we are not sure if this is a hallucination or a dream, Kate returns as an injured feral girl that has presumably been raised by wolves. Grainier tends to her wounds and she leaves shortly afterwards, never to return.
Eventually, Grainier acknowledges that his aging body can no longer take the rigors of working timber. He starts to find that his body takes the entire off-season to begin to recover. He manages to strike up a deal for a couple of horses and a wagon. This finally gives the ability to find work near his cabin transporting people and/or goods. In the winter he lives in his cabin and boards the horses in town. He does this until he is an old man, until one day he decides to venture off to Spokane, Washington. There he sees television for the first time and goes to a fair and rides in an airplane for the first time. In the movie, the story ends shortly after this. In the book, Grainier, is somewhat overtaken by lust from seeing all the women in the city. He spends a week there and then heads back to his cabin desiring to go back into the fray, but ultimately decides against. Eventually, one winter, he passes away quietly and alone in his cabin and is not discovered until the following spring. He came into the world not knowing who he was, or where he came from, and he exited it with those questions still unanswered.