The Revenant by Michael Punke

The year is 1823, and the trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Hugh Glass is among the company’s finest men, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker. But when a scouting mission puts him face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. Two company men are dispatched to stay behind and tend to Glass before he dies. When the men abandon him instead, Glass is driven to survive by one desire: revenge. With shocking grit and determination, Glass sets out, crawling at first, across hundreds of miles of uncharted American frontier. Based on a true story, The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession, the human will stretched to its limits, and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution.

Listening to this audio book after seeing the movie a year or so ago (I know, I know... I did it backwards...), was really interesting. For one, I prefer the movie in some instances and the book in others. The book, generally speaking, is almost always better than the movie. However, in the book Hugh Glass does not have a son who is killed and for whom he seeks revenge. His revenge in the book consists solely on the fact that he was abandoned as an injured man and his rifle, knife and a bunch of personal possessions were stolen when he was left alone. That alone was pretty disappointing... that he'd travel hundreds of miles for the sole purpose of his own revenge. The ending, however, is better than in the movie. In the movie, Glass hunts down Fitzgerald and slaughters him unmercifully... a Frenchman in the book refocuses Glass on who he really is near the end instead of encouraging him to pursue his revengeful quest. 
It still amazes me that this book was based on the dairies of the real Hugh Glass... that one man survived such horrors as Indian attacks, wolf attacks, bear mauling, near starvation, hypothermia and crawling/walking hundreds of miles on his own. The end of the book has a little bit of a history note that tells what actually happens to many of the main characters that is worth reading. 

5 out of 10