The Mountain Between Us: A Novel

Orthopedic surgeon Ben Payne is in Salt Like City, trying to fly to Denver before a big snowstorm hits. He meets a writer, Ashley Knox, who's trying to get home to Atlanta for her wedding. At the last minute, the flight is cancelled. But Ben is able to find a charter pilot who will fly him to Denver, and he invites Ashley to come along. Over the Uinta Mountains, the pilot has a heart attack, but manages to crash-land the plane before he dies. When Ben regains consciousness, he knows he has broken ribs. Ashley's leg is broken. The snow has closed in and largely buried them. Neither Ben nor Ashley told anyone they were taking a charter flight. The pilot didn't tell the tower he had passengers. No one will know to look for them or a plane crash. They are out of cell phone range, and far, far from anything even suggesting human activity. From the crashed plane, Ben fashions a sled to pull Ashley, and they set out into the unknown. Charles Martin has written a number of remarkable novels that connect place and relationship - novels like "Chasing Fireflies," "The Dead Don't Dance," "Maggie," "Wrapped in Rain," "When Crickets Cry," and "Where the River Ends." Martin is as much a storyteller of landscape as he is of people and brokenness. All of his previous works have been based in the southeastern United States - Georgia, northern Florida and South Carolina, a familiar landscape for Martin. With "The Mountain Between Us" (published in 2010), while part of the story is based in the Jacksonville area, Martin sets most of his story in the Utah wilderness. It's a riveting story of survival, stripping away all the facades constructed by two people who come to depend upon each other for their very lives. Ben is married to Rachel, with two children. Ashley is engaged to marry with two days time. They will spend the next four weeks together fighting snow, fending off mountain lions, trying to find food and shelter and somehow find civilization. And tend to their injuries. Along the way Ashley will learn that Ben is separated from his wife, and Ben will learn that Ashley isn't entirely convinced she should be marrying Vince. Yet each remains faithful, even as they are forced into a personal proximity to each other that most married couples don't have. And Ashley begins to sense that Ben is carrying some deep personal pain that he won't let go of. Martin's usual attention to detail - a trademark of his writing - is fully employed here, so much so that the reader is walking and crawling with them, hunting rabbits and moose, desperately trying to stay alive. It's an unforgiving landscape, it's winter, and the cold is felt on every page. "The Mountain Between Us" is a captivating story, written with the skill I've come to expect from Charles Martin.

This book was a recommend to me by my husband who watched the movie on a flight several years ago. “You would love this book,” he told me. After reading Charles Martins’ Chasing Fireflies, I picked up The Mountain Between Us. Just wow — as I’ve said before, if you haven’t read a Charles Martin book, you are missing out. Due to weather in Salt Lake, commercial flights are canceled. Desperate to get home, Dr. Ben Payne hires a charter pilot, Grover, to fly him home to Florida to his wife and kids. On a whim, he asks Ashley, a fellow passenger who is on her way home for her wedding, if she’d like to join so as not to be late for her special day. The three, and Grover’s dog, beat the storm and head toward Denver when Grover’s heart gives out leaving Ben, Ashley, and Napoleon, the name Ben and Ashley give to the dog, to survive the Uintas Wilderness. Without filing a flight plan, and with neither Ben nor Ashley having told anyone of their change from commercial to charter, no one is looking or them. To make matters more dire, upon impact, Ashley’s shoulder dislocates and her femur breaks. Making it out of the vast, rugged, and isolated terrain alive will take more than shear strength. The Mountain Between Us is an incredible story that is superbly written, and worth every minute it takes to read it. I hear the movie is good as well, but I have no intention of watching it — why ruin a good book by trying to put the words on screen. I cannot stress enough how The Mountain Between Us will have you looking inward, mulling over your personal relationships, and checking yourself to uncovering your strength. And the ending — a total shocker to me. I LOVE THIS BOOK and wish it just kept going.

My new author. Introduced by book club. Comparable to Kristin Hannah’s style of just great storytelling. You will enjoy the journeys.

This story is heart wrenching and beautiful. I felt deeply connected to the character main character Ben Payne. This is my first Charles Martin book and it certainly won't be my last! Highly recommend to someone who wants to get into a clean fiction novel with a great story.

I wasn't sure if I would enjoye this book but it is one that will stick with me. Excellent story. The strange part of this is on a recent business trip to Sacramento, I had a layover in Salt Lake. I started reading this book. Once boarded the pilot said we would experience some turbulence. Not sure it was a great time to read this :) but enjoyed it very much.

It's a book set in Utah, without one Mormon joke. Not one. Of course, the plot isn't all that funny anyway. A man (Dr. Ben Payne), trying to get home from a medical conference, is frustrated when his commercial flight was canceled. So he does what all of us would do. He charters a private plane to beat the storm. (What? You wouldn't do that? Well that's why people don't write books about you.) At the last moment, he thinks of another stranded passenger he'd had a conversation with - a woman trying to get to her wedding, which happens to be that weekend. The two of them hurriedly get on a plane with an older pilot, but not before Ben checks his voicemail, in which his wife says she forgives him. He doesn't call her back, before taking off from Salt Lake with a blushing, beautiful bride-to-be. In fact, none of the three people in the plane tell anyone that they're headed off on a single engine plane instead of the commercial jet liner. Ben finds his new friend attractive, of course, but is a loyal sort of man. As they take off from the hangar, the old pilot gives her wedding advice and regales them with stories of romance and long-term love. That is, until his story is cut short by the fact that he inconveniently has a heart attack right in the middle of one of the harshest stretches of land in the United States. No, not Philly... the High Uintas Wilderness. Miraculously, Ben and the bride-to-be (Ashley Knox) survive... and so does a host of items that allow them to survive for 28 days in the frozen tundra of Utah. (A compass, a bow, an item that boils water, a lighter, and so forth. What they didn't crash with, Ben can create out of good old fashioned American ingenuity and spit. That's the kind of guy he is - a hiker, a runner, and someone who can down a moose at fifty yards.) Ashley's leg is broken, and Ben has to help her survive by setting her leg, carrying her a million miles on a make-shift sled, and helping her go to the bathroom. Except there is no bathroom, because this page turning survival story mostly takes place on the side of a mountain. As Ben and Ashley bond - and she consequently misses her wedding - they are attracted to each other. I mean, what man doesn't love leg hair stubble and the smell of starvation on his loved one's breath? And what woman wouldn't fall for the guy who invited her to fly in a blizzard, on a single engine prop plane with a pilot that makes John McCain look like a young whippersnapper? Ben, it turns out, is separated from his wife though he faithfully records messages for her on a voice recorder. Ashley eavesdrops on Ben's sweet words to his wife, as he tells stories about his current battle for survival, interspersed with tales of their former love. It's therapeutic, apparently, and he happened to buy a value-pack of batteries at the airport. Ashley begins to wonder if she's engaged to the right kind of guy. Her fiancé, for example, wouldn't know how to gut a moose. Nor would he leave her such tender messages. But what could've been "Bridge of Madison County, On Ice" takes an interesting and clever turn. One you don't want to miss. (Originally published on SixSeeds.tv)

Excellent book

I really enjoyed this novel. It’s a bit of a slow starter but once it gets going it’s QUITE the story. It’s an adventure novel in the survivalist, romance mold that tells the story of Ben, the love of his life Rachel and the woman he is in a plane crash with, Ashley. This is really well-written and enjoyable to read especially considering that most of the book only involves three characters, one of whom is narrating the entire story. I found the major premise of the novel regarding Ben and Rachel’s relationship, a little obvious but it was still gorgeous to read. It truly is an amazing revelation of love and as enjoyable and strong a character, Ashley is, this novel is all Ben- Perfect, “Manly,” Wise Ben. There is a bit of Deus Ex Machina in the resolution of this novel but I didn’t mind. I’ve never read anything by this author and I loved this novel and the author’s writing style. This was entertaining and emotional and romantic, although it’s by not at all a romance novel. The major themes of love and survival and grit running through out make it more realistic than a typical romance novel. This novel was also “clean” enough that you could share it with your grandparents without a blush. I want to check out more books by this author now. And who knows, I’m not really a movie fan but I might even see the movie of this book now.

When 2 people meet by chance in an airport trying to get home before a major storm, little do they know that it will impact their lives forever. One is a doctor returning from a medical conference, the other a journalist trying to get home for her rehearsal dinner. When their flight is cancelled, the doctor arranges with a local charter service to get him out before the weather socks in. He remembers his chance encounter with the journalist, bride to be and ask if she would like to join him and hopefully get to her dinner in time. The pilot is an experienced military pilot who is very familiar with the area and thinks that if they leave right now they can get out before the storm hits. As often happens, life has other plans and the life and death adventure that follows is the plot of this story. Very hard to put this book down! I understand that it has now been made into a movie.

Unusually for me, I watched the Kate Winslet/Idris Elba movie version first. The movie's good, but the book is so much better! I thought it was beautifully written, with chapters being delivered in reasonably short bursts, maintaining the reader's interest. The story is seen and told through the eyes of Ben Payne, a doctor. Events taking place in the present are interlaced with flashbacks relating to events that have already occurred in Ben's life. Ben has been at a medical conference and is trying to get back home when he is told that his flight has been cancelled due to bad weather. He is scheduled to operate on a patient within a few hours and he decides to charter a flight to Denver, which will almost certainly get him home in time. Ashley Knox is also stuck at the same airport. She and Ben get talking and he invites her to join him on the charter flight and split the cost. Since she is about to get married, she also needs to get home sooner rather than later. But, when the pilot has a heart attack while flying over the Uintas National Forest, the charter plane crashes into the wilderness and Ben and Ashley must work together in an effort to survive. Ben has broken a few ribs and Ashley has broken a leg in the crash. So far so good - the book and the movie kind of agree in content. But it's at this point that the movie and book story lines begin to diverge. The book takes on a life of its own and I'm really struggling now to understand why the movie pursued the angle it did. The book is a wonderful concoction of a tale of endurance, love and survival against all the odds. And it's quite cleverly written on two levels, so we're not just talking about endurance, love and survival on the mountain alone. I absolutely love the book and I really wish the movie had stuck to it!

Melhor livro! Emocionante e arrasador. Diferente de tudo que li. Faz a gente refletir.. e muito!

Ahhh... I have found a new author to read. I found that this novel was beautifully told. Not only could I picture all that was happening, but even now, hours after I finished, I keep remembering things that were said and thought. Things that I think most of us really know but somehow in our busy lives tend to forget or not think about. To say that I was "moved" by the story would understate my feeling for this book. I would unhesitatingly recommend The Mountain Between Us to anyone who is even thinking about reading it.

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