Ridgerunner by Gil Adamson

I have just finished reading Ridgerunner by Gil Adamson, a novel that left me deeply satisfied and savouring the experience of reading a really good book.

We first meet William Moreland, known as the Ridgerunner, always on the move, thieving his way through the west. The Wild West seems very far removed from the war raging in Europe.

Sheltered in the Rocky Mountains, in Banff, Alberta, 12-year-old Jack Boulton is living with a nun, who has taken him in after the death of his mother. Jack is mourning, and missing the man he knows as his father, the man we know as the Ridgerunner. 

Jack is a clever boy, and though he hates attending school in Banff, he reads voraciously and loves what he discovers in books. He reads through the night in the library in the nun’s house.

Much of the enjoyment of reading this novel was in the trajectory of the story – telling you what happens would ruin too much of that. There was such pleasure in not knowing what comes next as we barrel along.

You have to take this one on trust, and believe me when I say it was a great story and a wonderfully written novel. The language was such a pleasure to read, with vivid descriptions of the landscape, and life in the early 1900s in western Canada. The cast of characters is both eccentric and compelling. You will never forget the nun whose storied history is slowly revealed from beginning to end. You will feel despair for the young Jack Boulton and the circumstances in which he finds himself. And, if in the first few pages you wonder why you are reading about a thief who seems to have no concern for others, just wait, as even William Moreland will come to be someone for whom you feel compassion.

I did wish I remembered more of the details of Gil Adamson’s earlier book, Outlander, which this one follows, but it mattered little, and this one can be read without having read the first. I knew I reviewed Outlander some years ago, so after reading Ridgerunner, I looked on my website and read through the review – discovering at the end I had written “In these days of doom and gloom this imaginative make-believe tale is the perfect escape”. It was February 4, 2009. I imagine we were worried about the economy then, as we are now – and just as we survived then, we will this time. And, once again, Gil Adamson has presented us with a great escape in Ridgerunner.