Moontrap - Softcover

Berry, Don

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0870710397 ISBN 13: 9780870710391

Publisher: Oregon State University Press, 2004

Synopsis

The year is 1850, a transitional period in the new Oregon Territory, with settlers and lawmakers working to subdue the untamed region. Johnson Monday, a former mountain man, has been living on a bend of the Willamette River near Oregon City for seven years with his Shoshone Indian wife, struggling to make a place in settled society. One day, Webster T. Webster, a raucous, unrepentant trapper, arrives for an unexpected visit. With his earthy humor and stubborn adherence to the simple life, "Webb" leads Monday through adventures that flirt dangerously close to lawlessness, while helping him to rediscover his moral center. Through defiance, triumph, and tragedy, Moontrap follows Johnson Monday as he realizes that relinquishing the stark honesty of mountain life for the compromises of civilization may be too high a price to pay.

About this title

About the Author

Don Berry (1932-2001) considered himself a native Oregonian, although he was born in Minnesota, with a lineage from Fox Indians. After attending Reed College, where his housemates included poet Gary Snyder, who shared his interest in Eastern metaphysics, Berry began a lifetime of pursuing his many passions: playing down-home blues and composing synthesizer music, sumi drawing and painting, sculpting in bronze, exploring theoretical mathematics, and writing for prize-winning films.

In addition to his three novels about the Oregon Territory ("Trask," "Moontrap," and "To Build a Ship"), published in the early1960s, Berry wrote "A Majority of Scoundrels," a history of the Rocky Mountain fur trade. An early Internet pioneer, he also created a remarkable body of literature that exists now only in cyberspace.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oregon State University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0870710397
• ISBN 13: 9780870710391
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 315