Mix of Western, historical novel and novel development - worth reading!

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The 23-year-old Will (iam) Andrews is not happy with his student life at Harvard University, he wants to experience the "freedom". He arrives in a sleepy little town called Butcher's Crossing in Kansas, where he received the offer to work (trading buffalo skins / drumheads) in a previous acquaintance of his father in his business. However, Will is looking for adventure, so he joins a group of three men and invested his money in a hunting expedition. The leader, an adventurer named Miller, well versed in the areas of the Wild West, where there is a particularly large buffalo, good and promises and his companions a lucrative business because of buffalo heads on the market good prices can be achieved.
Four pull the men with three riding horses and a team of oxen in the wilderness, where they expect a lot of dangers.

Assessment
The first and the third part of the story describes the arrival of the protagonists in Butcher's Crossing, at the beginning it is a dreamy, naïve youth, when returning to the hunting expedition, he has changed a lot through the privation months and the hard work in the wilderness.
The middle - and longest - part portrays the adventures of four men, while on the go: the dangers of the journey (water shortages, storms), the bloodlust of endless buffalo hunt and the "group dynamics" in the isolation from the outside world in small groups.
In a quiet, almost factual narrative style without any melodrama the author manages to describe the atmosphere of the harsh life in the "Wild West" of the 1870s, most vividly, this section is great and enthralling, though sometimes difficult to bear with its gory details. The four members of the expedition to characterize very detailed and credible.
The dealing with the situation in Butcher's Crossing narrative sections are "atmospherically dense ', but they convey a rather melancholy mood and give (in my opinion) with the mediated image of women cause for criticism.
Nevertheless, can the narrative of the author in this - before "Stoner" published work to captivate, you need not be a Western fan to appreciate this novel.

Conclusion
A mixture of Western, historical novel and developing novel, well worth reading!