The Danger Trail

Description

The Danger Trail by James Oliver Curwood is a great and entertaining vintage mystery and adventure story, with all the ingredients of a vintage mystery and adventure story. The reader is in for strange visitors, romance, excitement, danger, coincidences that turn out not to be coincidences at all and all these in the forbidding climate and harsh terrain conditions of the Canadian wilderness.

The protagonist of the novel is one Jack Howland, an engineer from Chicago sent to Prince Albert, Canada to work on a train route with his team. He anticipated certain kinds of difficulties, but he expected to encounter obstacles only because of the treacherous terrain. He soon finds out how wrong he has been: the previous engineers who were sent to Prince Albert to work on the same project – two men who were not at all less tough than Howland himself – did not abandon their assignment only because of the hard work required from them.

Jack encounters lots of strange people during his stay in Prince Albert, lots of uncooperative locals and he is repeatedly involved in dangerous, often life-threatening situations that he manages to escape from due to his resourcefulness and his courage. However, his experiences with mysterious people are not all bad: he meets a really sweet girl as well who seems to follow him everywhere and, as it can be expected, the two will soon fall in love with each other, further complicating the already complicated situation.

Published in 1910, The Danger Trail is one Curwood’s most exciting novels, which is a huge thing to say, considering how vast and varied the author’s oeuvre is. Written in the tradition established by Jack London, the book comes not only with an eventful and well-structured plot, but also with wonderful descriptions of the natural environment and interesting, complex characters that propel the plot forward with unexpected twists and turns.
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