Title: "Under the Big Sky"

Author: Jackson J. Benson

The author, A.B. "Bud" Guthrie Jr., subject of "Under the Big Sky," spent the last winter of his life in Bismarck, still writing at the age of 90. Though not mentioned in Benson's review, the last formal interview and photographs of Guthrie were by the Bismarck Tribune during that winter of 1991.

A.B. Guthrie, Pulitzer Prize- winning author of "The Way West" and the screenplay for the classic movie "Shane," is the subject of Jackson J. Benson's newest biography, "Under the Big Sky."

Benson is the highly acclaimed biographer of John Steinbeck, Wallace Stegner and Ernest Hemingway, among others. He is an emeritus professor of English at San Diego State University.

In the biography, Benson chronicles the evolution of a writer by detailing the man who came to be regarded as one of the giants in Western literature. Benson makes clear the effect of the Montana landscape on Guthrie's childhood.

Guthrie grew up on the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains in the small town of Choteau, Mont., at a time when the ways of the Old West were changing to a modern way of life. Choteau is undeniably a pattern for communities that appear throughout Guthrie's books. For this very reason, Guthrie was not always popular in his hometown.

Most of his early adult life Guthrie spent as a newspaperman on the Lexington Leader in Lexington, Ky. Benson does an admirable job of analyzing Guthrie's personal and professional development at that time in his life. Although these years were productive professionally for Guthrie, they proved challenging personally. For many years, he divided his time between Montana and Kentucky, though he never stopped considering himself a Montanan.

Separated for months at a time from his wife and children, letters were their only method of communication. These letters reveal intense personal conversations between Guthrie and his first wife, Harriet. Fortunately, many of these letters survived and are included in the biography.

In the 1940s Guthrie was granted a Nieman Fellowship to study at Harvard University and was given a year's leave from his newspaper duties. At this time, Guthrie began a book about the American West.

This historical novel came to be called "The Big Sky" and was received so well that Guthrie was able to support his family as a writer. Guthrie was instantly brought into a world of literature in which he had never expected to find himself. He could count among his friends Robert Frost, Bernard DeVoto and James Michener.

Benson does an impressive job of transporting a reader through the rise and fall of Guthrie's life. There were many sad times in the life of Guthrie that included personal challenges, family problems, declining success as a writer and a failed marriage. Benson writes with understanding of these bleak periods in Guthrie's life, and it is with relief that the reader learns Guthrie's personal story has a happy ending.

Benson does a delicate job dealing with Guthrie relationship with his second wife, Carol. Once again, Guthrie's love of language can be found in the courtship letters that Benson includes. This second marriage sustained him through the last decades of his life, while the added energy of a much younger wife created a new energy in his professional life as well.

Guthrie continued to write novels, finishing his last book at the age of 90.

Benson's use of personal interviews with family, friends and other authors make this biography a pertinent, personal and interesting summer read.

(Kari Stromme teaches English at St. Mary's Central High School.)