Reviewed by Nikki Pringle for Reader Views (8/08)

Tyler Perkins grew up among the vast mountains, valleys, and lakes of Wyoming. He used to go fly fishing with a man named Soren Andeman who had become like a father to him after his own was gone. On one trip, Ty made a promise to come back one day when Soren was older to take him on one last fishing trip. Years later, Ty joins the Marines and serves in both Afghanistan and Iraq during the wars. He comes back to his new home in Virginia a different man than the one he was before he left. He is uncommunicative and inattentive to his wife and is having a hard time letting go of the past and looking towards the future. When he receives an unexpected postcard from Soren, now eighty-six-years old and still living in the Wyoming backcountry, Ty decides to take a trip out West to take his old fishing buddy on one last adventure, as he had promised all those years before.

What was supposed to be a relaxing escape from everyday life turns into more than Ty bargained for when old lies, betrayals, and long-buried secrets come rushing to the surface like a brown trout rising in a cold mountain stream. When the men's stories are shared, Ty must contemplate what justice and forgiveness really means, not just for himself, but for those around him here in Wyoming and back in Virginia. The trip home turns in to a desperate life or death struggle. Perhaps nature is trying to take matters in to its own hands with an act of God that will ensure justice at last.

"Wind River" is as breathtaking as the vistas Tom Morrisey so eloquently describes. He does more than ample justice to his novel's location and to the characters that he had developed so richly. "Wind River" is a tale of returning to ones roots, both spiritual and real, and having the ability to look deep inside to find the answers to making things right that no one else can give. I found myself lost in this tale of nature and nurture and was enthralled by the beauty that Morrisey led me to imagine as clearly as if I was actually there through his wonderful storytelling. I recommend "Wind River" to any reader who is looking for something captivating and beautiful to add to their reading list.

Tom Morrisey enticed me with beautiful prose that opened a window into an unknown-to-me wilderness. With wordsmithing magic, Morrisey teased my mind -- flicking facts, thoughts and tension onto the periphery, then slipping out of sight until I was poised, waiting, tensing for the next cast. I was hooked early, but instead of fighting like the cutthroats, I surrendered to this novel.

I knew, from the first scene, the foreboding shadows of finality and frailty and perfect snapshot moments dissolving into tarnished reality, that something awful would befall the characters that I had already begun to love. Anything else will spoil the story web that Morrisey weaves, except to say that though there is a sense of foreboding, there is a stronger, underlying hope.

It is a rare gift Mr. Morrisey possesses -- the ability to weave a tense plot, the clarity to write a scene that can be devoured with all five senses, and the heart to create characters that clutch at the reader's soul.

If you are not reading Tom Morrisey and you love literary novels, you need to get Wind River regardless of your stance on Christian Fiction. Book lovers need to investigate Morrisey's novels. Those looking for a man's man read need to look no further. Fans of Lief Enger, W. Dale Cramer and Charles Martin should find much to like in Wind River.

His time in combat in Iraq still haunts Tyler Perkins; just ask his beleaguered wife Angela. Thus he has a second reason to take his octogenarian friend Soren Andeman fly fishing; the first being he promised to do so. The pair travels to WIND RIVER, Idaho for some getaway time.

However, the R&R that Tyler expected is nuked when Soren reveals the real reason he wanted to come to Wind River, a place he has been to before. His dark secret frightens Tyler and if revealed could hurt those nearby including someone special to the eighty-six years old man. However, before he can come to grips with what Soren told him, the weather turns ugly making this respite into a battle of survival.

This is an excellent buddy tale as an elderly honorable man with a troubling secret, a just as honorable vet with post traumatic stress disorder and the weather make for a deep character driven thriller. The story line is driven by the duel fuels of doing the right thing and surviving. Readers will relish this compelling tale as two men decades apart in age seek forgiveness and redemption in the wilderness, but as they battle to survive realize where they must truly go to achieve atonement. WIND RIVER is an excellent inspirational thriller.

Harriet Klausner