LAST OF THE BREED [Mass Market Paperback]

Set during the hostilities between the Soviet Union and the USA Joseph "Joe Mack" Makatozi is a man trapped in enemy territory. He is a downed test Pilot who has been captured by the Russians and is seemingly at their mercy in the inhospitable landscape called Siberia; the only inhabited cold Hell in existence.

However Joe Mack isn't your ordinary test pilot. He is part Sioux and in his blood is the will to survive a savage land that was once home to his ancestors. He escapes his prison with the goal of crossing Siberia and making his way across the Bering Straits and into America, something that has not been done by modern man.

Joe Mack finds himself slowly merging with the wilderness, forced to rely on his ancestral abilities to survive the killing cold and elude the constant danger of his determined Soviet pursuers, including a man who is to become his nemesis, a Siberian Native Yakut tracker called Alekhin who knows that in order to trap his quarry he must think and act like a Sioux.

As we follow Joe Mack across the deadly landscape we become aware that he is changing, he is becoming what his ancestors once were thousands of years ago, trackers, hunters, killers, but ultimately survivors.

It is a slow transformation, and along the way we watch him struggle to hold onto his humanity, finding love in the guise of a woman who helps him and a fragile but brief friendship with a crippled furrier but all the time he is in the cruel wilderness Joe Mack is changing into something that can never revert back to what it once was.

He hungers for revenge against Alekhin and the jovial but brutal Soviet Commander who imprisoned him and the book ends on an eerie haunting note when the Soviet Commander receives the scalp of Alekhin and a gentle warning from the wilderness that he will be next...

This is a truly magnificent book about a man's ability to transcend his environment and upbringing and descend into savagery in order to survive.

Once you start reading this book you won't be able to put it down, this is no run of the mill pot boiler about the noble savage. There nothing remotely noble about Joe Mack, but you find yourself admiring him for his ability to survive against all the odds.

Out on the cold, desolate plains of Siberia there stood a boy, filled and surrounded by the incredible writing of a man who is close to the ways of the wild. This boy stood watching a Soiux warrior in his journey home. This boy was me. When I read Last of the Breed by Louis L'Amoure, I experienced a feeling I had never felt before. It was a feeling of lonliness, comfort, joy and sorrow. I could feel the cold that Major Joe Mack felt. I could feel his hunger as well as my own as I feverishly read through the last minutes of class before the bell rang for me to go to lunch.

This is a book of capture and escape, a cat and mouse game between a man and his enemies. It has a quality about it that makes you want to keep reading, yet not want to know what imminent danger lies around the next rock, or hillside, or bend in the stream. I loved this book from beginning to end and have read several times as I hope you will too. If you enjoy the outdoors, suspense, survival, or if are just a Louis L'Amour fan, I highly suggest you give this book a try.