Nate King walks away from civilization and into the Rocky Mountain wilderness at the start of the Wilderness series, and he spends the next 71 books making a life there. David Robbins introduced him in King of the Mountain in 1990, a young man drawn west by the promise of freedom and adventure. What he finds is a world that rewards skill and punishes mistakes without mercy.
Over the course of three decades of publication, Nate marries a Shoshone woman, raises children on the frontier, and defends his family against a constantly changing set of threats. The series covers his entire adult life, from the energy of youth to the hard-won wisdom of old age. Few series characters have been followed for this many books, and the accumulation of experience across 71 installments gives Nate a depth that shorter series cannot achieve.
Robbins uses Nate as a lens through which to view the changing American frontier. The early books focus on the fur trade era and relations with Native American tribes. Later entries deal with the arrival of settlers, the shrinking of wild territory, and the end of the mountain man way of life. Nate’s personal story and the larger historical story run parallel, each giving weight to the other.
Reading Order
See the complete Wilderness reading order for all books in the series.