Into the untamed vastness of the Bitterroot mountains go three young New York men, their guide, and a camp cook. This is to be the adventure of a lifetime, but it is already September. Ahead of the hunters, as they make their way up the Lolo Trail, are the record snows of 1893 and a cruel, controversial decision.
 
Snowbound is the true story of the Carlin party, whose ill luck and bad judgement drove decent men to an ethical dilemma that intrigued the nation and still can raise an argument wherever people rub shoulders with wilderness.
 
Ladd Hamilton’s previous book for WSU Press, This Bloody Deed, detailed the story of the Magruder massacre of the 1860s in that same Idaho wilderness. The New York Times Book Review noted that “This Bloody Deed is marked by the author’s…familiarity with that rough Western terrain and his clear affection for the complex people who…roamed and tamed it.” Once again, Hamilton has brought rich narrative detail and crackling tension to an intriguing episode of Northwest history.
 
Ladd Hamilton retired in 1987 as senior editor and columnist of the Lewiston Morning Tribune, and since then has been writing and teaching journalism at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. He and his wife Pauletta live in the Lewiston Orchards.
 
(228 pages)