London Mud, Montana Dust

Catherine Lemay, a young, ambitious archaeologist, is introduced as she transitions from the muddy, history-laden ruins of postwar London to the vast, arid landscapes of Montana. Her journey is both literal and metaphorical: she leaves behind the comfort and structure of European archaeology for the unknowns of the American West. The contrast between the ancient, layered past of London and the seemingly empty, raw expanse of Montana sets the stage for her internal and external quests. Catherine's engagement to David, a New York broker, and her academic credentials are both sources of pride and anxiety as she faces skepticism about her role as a woman in a male-dominated field. The West, with its promise of discovery and danger, beckons her to prove herself.

Arrival in the Canyon

Upon arrival, Catherine is tasked with surveying a remote canyon slated to be flooded by a hydroelectric dam. She is met with logistical challenges—difficult terrain, a recalcitrant company guide, and the absence of her expected wrangler. The landscape is both beautiful and forbidding, and Catherine's initial attempts at fieldwork are marked by mishaps and self-doubt. Her outsider status is reinforced by the skepticism of locals and the indifference of the dam's backers. Yet, her determination to find meaning in the land's past drives her forward, even as she struggles to adapt to the physical and cultural environment.

Painted Horses, Painted Past

Catherine's first significant encounter is with a painted mustang and its mysterious handler, John H, a mustanger with a shadowy past. The wild horses, marked with ancient symbols, become a living link to the land's history and the people who once inhabited it. John H, both a relic and a renegade, is at home in the canyon's wildness, and his presence unsettles and intrigues Catherine. Their interactions are charged with tension, curiosity, and the unspoken recognition of shared outsider status. The painted horses themselves become a symbol of the collision between past and present, wildness and domestication.

The Mustanger's Secret

John H's history unfolds in parallel: a gifted horseman from a broken family, he drifts west after a traumatic childhood and brushes with the law. He is shaped by the violence and beauty of the land, the legacy of war, and the hard lessons of survival among outcasts—Basque shepherds, cowboys, and mustangers. His experiences in the horse canneries, the army, and postwar Europe are marked by loss, longing, and a search for belonging. The horses he captures and paints are both his livelihood and his connection to something sacred and vanishing.

The Archaeologist's Dilemma

As Catherine's survey progresses, she is caught between her scientific training and the ethical implications of her work. The dam project, which promises progress and power, threatens to erase the canyon's history and the traces of the Crow people. Catherine's growing awareness of the land's sacredness, and her relationships with Crow locals—especially Miriam, a sharp young woman—force her to question the neutrality of archaeology. The pressure from the dam's backers to find "nothing" is at odds with her own discoveries and conscience.

Ghosts in the Stone

Catherine and Miriam, working together, begin to find evidence of ancient habitation—carvings, pictographs, and artifacts that suggest the canyon's significance stretches back millennia. The most stunning find is a hidden gallery of petroglyphs, including images of extinct animals and handprints, echoing the painted caves of Europe. These discoveries are both exhilarating and terrifying, as they raise the stakes of Catherine's work and threaten the dam's progress. The ghosts of the land's past—Native, prehistoric, and personal—haunt every step.

The Crow and the Dam

The dam project becomes a flashpoint for conflict between the Crow Nation, the dam's corporate backers, and the government. The Crow are divided—some see the dam as a path to modernity and prosperity, others as a desecration of sacred land. Catherine is drawn into these tensions, her work politicized and her alliances tested. The dam's proponents, led by the ruthless Dub Harris, are determined to suppress any findings that might delay or derail construction. The stakes become personal as threats and betrayals mount.

Wild Horses, Wild Hearts

Amidst the turmoil, Catherine and John H are drawn together by their shared sense of exile and their reverence for the land's mysteries. Their relationship, at first wary and competitive, becomes intimate and transformative. The wild horses, elusive and symbolic, mirror their own struggles for freedom and meaning. Their love affair is both a refuge and a risk, as it places them in opposition to the forces seeking to erase the canyon's past.

The Hidden Gallery

Catherine and Miriam, with John H's help, document the hidden gallery of petroglyphs—images that could rewrite the history of human presence in North America. The discovery is a triumph, but also a burden: to reveal it is to risk its destruction; to hide it is to betray their calling. The gallery becomes a crucible for their values, relationships, and hopes. The tension between preservation and progress, secrecy and revelation, comes to a head.

Betrayal and Bargain

The dam's backers, learning of the discovery, move swiftly to suppress it. Catherine is detained, threatened, and forced into a devil's bargain: her silence and the destruction of the gallery in exchange for the safety of those she loves. Miriam is manipulated and betrayed, and John H is hunted as an outlaw. The cost of resistance is high, and the forces of power and light—embodied by Harris and his men—seem unstoppable. The gallery is dynamited, and the evidence erased.

The Ruin and the Rescue

Catherine, battered and disillusioned, is released and sent home. John H, after a desperate ride to save the camera and film, manages to send evidence of the gallery east, but at the cost of his beloved horse and his own safety. The canyon is lost, the dam proceeds, and the wild horses scatter. The survivors—Catherine, Miriam, John H—are left to reckon with what remains: memory, scars, and the knowledge of what was destroyed.

Power, Light, and Loss

The dam is completed, the canyon flooded, and the official story is one of progress and triumph. The cost—the loss of history, culture, and wildness—is unacknowledged by those in power. Catherine returns to the East, changed and haunted. Miriam pursues her own path, torn between tradition and modernity. John H disappears into legend, his fate uncertain. The painted horses, like the gallery, become a memory, a myth.

The Cost of Progress

The narrative shifts to consider the broader implications of the story: the relentless march of progress, the erasure of inconvenient histories, and the resilience of those who remember. The personal losses—love, innocence, belonging—are mirrored by the cultural and environmental devastation. Yet, the story also honors the acts of resistance, the moments of connection, and the enduring power of art and memory.

The Return to Silence

Catherine, back in her old life, struggles to reconcile her experiences in Montana with the expectations of her family and society. She is marked by what she has seen and done, unable to return to her former innocence. The silence of the flooded canyon echoes in her, but so does the knowledge that some things endure—love, art, the urge to bear witness.

Pieces of God

The story returns to the theme of the sacred: the ways in which people seek meaning in the fragments of the past, the tension between reverence and exploitation. Catherine's work in London and Montana is reframed as a search for "pieces of God"—moments of transcendence, beauty, and connection. The lessons of the canyon, and the cost of their loss, linger.

The Enduring Mark

Despite the destruction, traces remain: a photograph, a painting, a memory. Catherine receives a letter years later, a reminder that the past is never entirely lost. The handprints in the stone, the painted horses, and the love she found and lost continue to shape her. The story ends with a sense of both mourning and hope—the mark endures, even as the world changes.

Epilogue: The Hand in Stone

The novel closes with a vision of endurance: a man in the twilight, painting a new handprint on the stone, carrying forward the memory of what was lost. Catherine, too, carries her scars and her knowledge into the future, changed but unbroken. The canyon is gone, but its spirit persists in those who remember and in the marks they leave behind.

Characters

Catherine Lemay

Catherine is the novel's protagonist, a young archaeologist whose journey from London to Montana is both a professional assignment and a personal odyssey. She is intelligent, ambitious, and determined to prove herself in a field—and a world—dominated by men. Her psychoanalytic core is a tension between the desire for order and the pull of the unknown, between the safety of civilization and the wildness of the frontier. Her relationships—with her fiancé David, with Miriam, and most profoundly with John H—force her to confront her own values, vulnerabilities, and capacity for love and loss. Over the course of the novel, Catherine evolves from an outsider and observer to a participant and, ultimately, a witness to both beauty and tragedy.

John H (John H. Borel)

John H is a complex, enigmatic figure: a horseman with a gift for understanding and taming wildness, both in animals and in himself. His past is marked by trauma—abandonment, violence, war, and the loss of love. He is both a product of the American West and an exile from it, at home in the margins and among the outcasts. His artistry—painting horses, marking the land—reflects his longing for connection and meaning. His relationship with Catherine is transformative for both, offering a glimpse of redemption even as it is shadowed by the forces arrayed against them. John H's development is a journey from isolation to intimacy, from survival to sacrifice.

Miriam

Miriam is Catherine's assistant and guide, a young Crow woman caught between the pull of tradition and the pressures of modernity. She is intelligent, resourceful, and often sarcastic, using humor to mask her own uncertainties. Her relationship with Catherine is one of mutual learning and support, but also of tension as the dam project threatens her community and her future. Miriam's psychoanalytic depth lies in her struggle to define herself amid competing expectations, and her eventual betrayal is both a personal and cultural tragedy. Yet, she remains a figure of resilience and adaptation.

Jack Allen

Jack Allen is the company's wrangler and a foil to both Catherine and John H. He is competent, sardonic, and ultimately complicit in the dam's destruction of the canyon. His motivations are complex: part self-interest, part fatalism, part attraction to Catherine and the wild horses. He represents the pragmatic, often ruthless side of the West—capable of both violence and charm, but ultimately aligned with the forces of progress and erasure. His psychological makeup is one of suppressed longing and resigned complicity.

Dub Harris

Dub Harris is the antagonist, the driving force behind the dam and the suppression of the canyon's history. He is charismatic, intelligent, and utterly convinced of the righteousness of progress and power. His worldview is utilitarian, dismissing the sacred and the past as obstacles to be overcome. Harris's psychoanalysis reveals a man shaped by ambition, entitlement, and a deep-seated need to control and conquer. He is both a product and a perpetrator of the American myth of mastery over nature.

Max Caldwell

Max is a local mechanic who befriends Catherine and serves as a moral anchor in the story. He is practical, kind, and quietly subversive, helping Catherine and John H at key moments. His psychoanalytic role is that of the good father—supportive, wise, and willing to stand up to power when necessary. He represents the possibility of decency and solidarity in a world of competing interests.

Crane Girl (Miriam's Grandmother)

Crane Girl is a living link to the past, a Crow elder whose memories and rituals embody the sacredness of the land. She is both frail and formidable, her presence a reminder of what is at stake in the struggle over the canyon. Her psychoanalytic depth lies in her role as a vessel of collective memory, a figure whose wisdom and suffering are both personal and communal.

David

David is Catherine's fiancé, a New York broker who represents the life she is expected to lead. He is supportive but ultimately unable to understand or accept Catherine's transformation. His psychoanalytic role is that of the safe, conventional choice—orderly, rational, and ultimately inadequate for the demands of the new world Catherine inhabits.

Elixabete

Elixabete is a Basque woman John H loves and loses in postwar Europe. She is passionate, intellectual, and fiercely independent, embodying both the promise and the fragility of connection. Her death, and the loss of their child, haunt John H and shape his capacity for love and grief. She is a symbol of what might have been, and her memory lingers as a source of both pain and inspiration.

The Painted Horses

The wild horses themselves are characters—living embodiments of the land's history, resilience, and beauty. They are both hunted and revered, their survival a testament to the endurance of what cannot be tamed. Their painted bodies echo the marks left by vanished peoples, and their fate is intertwined with that of the canyon and its human inhabitants.

Plot Devices

Dual Narrative Structure

The novel alternates between Catherine's present-day quest and John H's backstory, using parallel narratives to build suspense, deepen character, and draw connections between personal and historical trauma. This structure allows the reader to see the echoes between past and present, and to understand the stakes of the story on both intimate and epic scales.

Symbolism of Horses and Handprints

Horses—wild, painted, and domesticated—are central symbols, representing freedom, memory, and the collision of cultures. Handprints, both ancient and modern, serve as signatures of presence, survival, and resistance. These symbols are woven throughout the narrative, linking characters across time and space.

Foreshadowing and Irony

From the outset, the novel foreshadows the destruction of the canyon and the erasure of its history. The irony of Catherine's assignment—to find "nothing"—is gradually revealed as she uncovers evidence that could change everything, only to see it destroyed. The tension between what is known and what is lost drives the narrative's emotional power.

Betrayal and Bargain

The plot turns on moments of betrayal—Miriam's coerced confession, Catherine's forced silence, John H's sacrifice. These betrayals are not simple acts of malice, but the result of impossible choices in the face of overwhelming power. The bargains struck—between truth and safety, love and survival—underscore the novel's exploration of complicity and resistance.

The Gallery as MacGuffin

The secret gallery of petroglyphs functions as a MacGuffin—a hidden treasure that drives the plot and motivates the characters. Its discovery, documentation, and destruction are the central events around which the story turns, embodying the novel's themes of loss, memory, and the cost of progress.

Modernist Allusions and Intertextuality

The novel is rich with allusions—to classical archaeology, modernist art, Native American myth, and the literature of the West. These references deepen the narrative, situating the characters' struggles within broader cultural and historical currents. The interplay between the sacred and the profane, the old world and the new, is a constant undercurrent.

Analysis

Painted Horses is a sweeping, elegiac meditation on the collision between progress and preservation, the sacred and the profane, the wild and the civilized. Through the intertwined stories of Catherine and John H, the novel explores the costs of erasure—of landscapes, cultures, and personal histories—in the name of power and modernity. The canyon, with its hidden gallery and wild horses, becomes a crucible for questions of identity, belonging, and responsibility. The novel's modern resonance lies in its refusal to offer easy answers: it acknowledges the allure of progress and the inevitability of change, but insists on the value of memory, resistance, and the marks we leave behind. Painted Horses ultimately asks what it means to bear witness—to love, to loss, to the enduring spirit of a place—and whether, in the face of overwhelming forces, such witness is enough.

Last updated: May 17, 2025