Following Trask in Don Berry's trilogy of novels set in the Oregon Territory, Moontrap is a book of remarkable beauty and power about a man caught between his vivid past and an uncertain future. The year is 1850, a transitional period in the new Oregon Territory, with settlers and lawmakers working to subdue the untamed, uncivilized region. Johnson Monday, a former mountain man, has been living on a bend of the Willamette River near Oregon City with his Shoshone Indian wife for seven years, struggling to make a place in settled society. One summer morning, Monday's old friend 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 comes to realize that relinquishing the stark honesty of mountain life for the compromises of civilization is too high a price to pay. Nominated for a National Book Award and winner of the Spur Award of the Western Writers of America for best historical novel, Moontrap recounts the conflict one man faces in keeping with his old ways or forging a new life. The OSU Press is proud to reissue this richly comic and intensely poignant portrayal of pioneer life in the Northwest.
