The first paragraph:
Out West, winter storms
begin as collisions of cold and warm air in the Gulf of Alaska. The two battle
for control, cold winning, then racing southeast to land, across coastal
mountain ranges to the deserts of the Great Basin. There the fronts accelerate
and gather fury, boiling high over the purple sage and the brine flats until
they draw one last infusion of moisture crossing Utah’s Great Salt Lake and
then slam into the chill, nearly vertical wall of the Wasatch Mountains. One
canyon, the Little Cottonwood, seems to suck the dark storm clouds into itself,
up its nine-mile rip, up 8,000 feet to the half-dozen peaks and ridges that
form the series of alpine bowls called Alta. Trapped by the jagged crags and
frozen cirques, the clouds are squeezed as if by a giant hand milking udders
and a snow like no other falls.
The Fall Line is Mark Sullivan’s first published novel and its setting is as appealing to me as the cover. I’ve spent the majority of my life in the Wasatch Mountains’ shadows. I can be at Alta in 25 minutes from my doorstep and at the top of the other Cottonwood, Big Cottonwood, in about the same. And the snow, it’s uniquely dry and light. The best snow I’ve ever skied, but I’m biased since it’s been my snow since I was a child.
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