by Rinker Buck
First published 2015
Rinker Buck sets out to recreate a journey that shaped America. He loads a covered wagon, hitches up three mules, and embarks on the 2,000-mile Oregon Trail with his brother Nick and their Jack Russell terrier Olive Oyl. No one has attempted this complete wagon journey in over a century. Buck navigates thunderstorms in Nebraska, chases escaped mules across Wyoming's vast plains, and scouts hundreds of miles of forgotten trail on foot. He crosses the Rockies, makes grueling fifty-mile marches searching for water, and repairs countless broken wheels and axles. Along the route, he encounters the stories of evangelists, con artists, Native Americans, and ordinary dreamers who first blazed this path west. Buck weaves together his own physical and emotional adventure with the rich history of the trail that united America's coasts, doubled the country's size, and carried 400,000 pioneers westward in the fifteen years before the Civil War. This participatory history combines personal adventure with the story of America's largest land migration.
Genres: history, adventure, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 19th-century, american-history
Vibes: emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: adventure, historical-journey
Setting: Nebraska, Wyoming, Rockies
Period: 15 Years Before Civil War
451 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster