God's Country The Legend of the Mountain Men

Faced with the prospects of being forced to be a surgeon by his domineering father, Jake Stanton realizes that not only does he hate the slaughterhouse known at the Jesuit Hospital in St. Louis, where he and his father have just relocated, but he hates cities in general.

Driven nearly insane by the carnage he faces on a daily basis, Jake quits and goes to work on the docks. There, he meets mountain man Dan McNeil, who promises to take him to the Rocky Mountains. 

The adventure changes Jake forever; he returns to St. Louis briefly, then goes back to the west permanently. In the back of his mind, a young girl named Becky, who he met in St. Louis, always remains. The manner in which he reunites with her is so strange even he can't believe it..

This is a rather long novel, as it follows Jake through his life well into his 70s. He sees it all; the destruction of the trapper's way of life, the decimation of the Indian nations, the endless strife and war in the young nation, and the death of everybody he knows. Through it all, he never loses his passion for his beloved Rocky Mountains and what they stood for in his day.