East of the Mountains By David Gutterson

This Book was written by David Guterson. He wrote another book which I don’t know much about called Snow Falling on Cedars. But he wrote this book which I was interested in certain parts of it, such as his ideal of wanting to commit suicide, a drifter who gave him some help on lessening the pain, and when he talked about his pass of when he was recruited from Camp Hale.

This was a good book in my opinion.

This book was set in the season of fall and it was around 1997. In the book he talked of his past when he was a little kid with his dad and when he was growing up meeting his wife. The area was a country type place in a rich apple growing region. In the state of Washington were he goes to many mountains in the surrounding area. This was the setting of the book.

There were many characters in this book. The main character of this book was Ben Givens a seventy- three year old retired heart surgeon. The whole story was set around him. Then there was his family which he talked about, Rachel who was his wife which who had pass away before him, Renee his daughter, Chris his grandson, Emma his granddaughter, Aidan his brother, and Wright Givens his father. Also he had two hunting dogs which were brow and white Brittanies named Rex and Tristan. On his hunting trip were he had planed on committing suicide he had met many people. A young couple who really get along with each other, a drifter who gave him some marijuana to ease the pain of his cancer, a veterinarian, a rancher and a migrant worker.

The summary of this story starts when Ben wakes up from another night of suffering from colon cancer. This day he had planned on his hunting trip that would ease his suffering. He had everything ready in the morning and he made it seem like he was just going on a hunting trip. Right when he starts his journey he gets into a car wreck destroying his car. But he is picked up by a couple that takes him to place that Ben thinks he can rent a car from.

When he finds he can’t and is trying to hitch a ride he meets a man that give’s him some “medical” marijuana to help ease his pain. Ben gives up and goes to hunt in the near by mountains.

He started out hunting the chukars with his hunting dogs.