First Frost

It's a yearly tradition: the annual trip back to Absaroka to catch up with Walt, Vic, Henry, and the rest. It's one of the few books I look forward to every year, and one of the few writers who doesn't misfire.

This time, Walt is dealing with the fallout from the previous book, THE LONGMIRE DEFENSE, and is being brought up on possible charges for a shooting that occurred at the end end of the previous book. He is also dealing with a story from the past, brought about when his fiancee, Vic Moretti, finds a behemoth longboard in Walt's basement.

What's a landlocked cowboy in Wyoming doing with a piece of vintage surf-riding wood?

Well, turns out–that's a long story.

Masterfully constructed by weaving the present into the past, Walt tells Vic the story of why he still has a longboard from his college days at USC, and details what seems to be the first time Walt and Henry really put their heads into a hornets' nest.

With the Vietnam war looming for both Walt and Henry, they had a week before they had to report to their respective locations for basic training. Intending to drive the country from Los Angeles to Fort Polk and Parris Island, respectively, karma has other plans when Walt and Henry end up sidelined in a barren nothing of a town where the only people there really want them to leave.

The town was dealing with its own history of being part of the internment camps for the Japanese in WWII, but that's only half the story.

Written in Craig Johnson's practiced and familiar laid-back prose, Walt and Henry seem to have odds stacked well against them this time.

We know that Walt and Henry will survive their encounter in the desert–but finding out how that first Walt-and-Henry adventure turns them into the men we know so well from the later adventures was a fascinating piece of history for this acclaimed and well-loved series.

It's a yearly tradition: the annual trip back to Absaroka. And it's also a yearly tradition that Johnson swings for the fences and knocks it out of the park.