The Pass

Kim — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 17:58:53 +0000

“The Pass” was Thomas Savage’s first novel, written by the iconic Western novelist in the 1930s and originally published by Doubleday in 1944. The book, set near Savage’s hometown of Dillon, Montana, takes place around 1910 when the area is newly settled. The railroad is on its way, bringing all that civilization has to offer to a remote valley, changing it forever. New rancher Jess Bentley struggles against the elements, against fate, and against all odds to run a successful outfit that will be suitable for his beloved new bride, Beth, and the baby the doctor warned them they would never see. Read about the life and times of author Thomas Savage in the Winter 2008 edition of “Montana: The Magazine of Western History”.

Lona Hanson

Kim — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 17:58:44 +0000

Originally published in 1948, one year after A. B. Guthrie’s The Big Sky, Lona Hanson establishes many of the themes of Thomas Savage’s later masterworks. In ranchwoman Lona Hanson, Savage creates an extraordinary character: passionate, driven, domineering, and ultimately tragic. As O. Alan Weltzien writes in his introduction to this new edition, “Savage’s resistance to, even revulsion from, hack Western plots in film or print stamped his own independence as he set about writing the Rocky Mountain West, he knew first hand, from the inside.”

Thomas Savage – Bickerstaff Booksellers

The Pass

Lona Hanson