 The first three books in chronological story sequence (but not in the sequence of publishing) — "The Big Sky", "The Way West", and "Fair Land, Fair Land" — are in themselves a complete trilogy, starting in 1830 with Boone Caudill leaving Kentucky to become a mountain man and ending with the death of Caudill and later the death of Dick Summers in the 1870s.In his "Author's note" at the beginning of the novel, Guthrie wrote that he had "sworn more than once to write no more about the early-day West and just as often have broken the vow.