When These Thousand Hills was published in 1956, The Saturday Review proclaimed it to be "so compelling that it is hard indeed to set aside until it has been devoured. " Conjuring up the ephemeral world of cattle ranchers in the 1880s, this intimate saga delights in a Montana community's boisterous, wanderlusting eccentrics as they chase after love and their unbridled ambitions. At its center is Lat Evans, good-hearted and yet seduced by the possibilities for prosperity in his new life; gradually he discerns how the perils of the natural world, and most especially human nature, can conspire to frustrate a young man's best intentions. A lively, quixotic revisit to our historic youth, this literary classic deftly captures western drama at its finest, with all its accompanying toils of the heart.