Meet Ben Payne and Ashley Martin. The former is a studious journalist departing from Salt Lake City airport to attend a medical conference, though severe weather conditions force him to take the road (flightpath?) less traveled and board a dinky charter plane. He isn’t the only one, as Ashley is also eager to return home to reunite with her fiancé. The two strangers then find themselves crammed into a small aircraft, but tragedy strikes when their pilot suffers a heart attack mid-flight, bringing their plane crashing down into the icy High Uintas Wilderness.

And that’s where The Mountain Between Us gets going in earnest. Charles Martin’s 2011 page-turner was hailed as a touching story of two strangers forced into a desperate life-or-death situation, one that is as much about the emotional journey as it is the literal pilgrimage that Ben and Ashley must endure.

Thrusting two ordinary people...