Let history speak for itself. That was my simple idea for the Mountain Man Classics series.
Like other westering people, the trappers of the Rocky Mountains kept journals, wrote books, and told their stories to writers eager to record them. Why not let these daring men speak in their own voices? So I set out to reprint some of those early books, especially the ones long out of print:
First, my own account of mountain men GIVE YOUR HEART TO THE HAWKS, a NYTimes bestseller. “It was an epic time, which lasted hardly more than a third of a century before civilization swarmed west on trails the mountain men had blazed. Now Blevins sees they are paid the awed honor that is due them, in a book which has the drama and suspense of a novel.”—Los Angeles Times
Journal of a Mountain Man, by James Clyman. His own account of his years with Jedediah Smith, Tom Fitzpatrick, and other the early explorers. A must-read for anyone interested in mountain men.
River of the West, the Mountain Years with Frances Full Victor—Joe Meek’s own story of his mountain man years. In Meek’s essential innocence and optimism, his vitality, his self-confidence and zest for life, Joe reminds me of a matured Huck Finn. Joe explored the mountains freely and kept his boyish enthusiasm through everything. He didn’t like the Aunt Polly’s of the world with their moralizing and burdensome seriousness. Life was just too much fun for that.
River of the West, the Oregon Years Of all the mountain men who walked the Rocky Mountains a century and a half ago, none other is so completely alive as Joe Meek. This book has been described as a howling yawp of youth and vitality, challenge and danger, exultation and joy. It is all of that and more.
The Long Rifle Fleeing his step-father, young Andy Burnett heads for the wild, untamed Rocky Mountains where adventure waits. His shoulder bears the long rifle of Daniel Boone, the very one carried by the legendary man on his first trip to Kentucky. Our author beats the drums of the American myth in the wonderful tale.
Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, by James Ohio Pattie and Timothy Flint. First published more than a century and a half ago, Pattie’s narrative is a unique look at life in the untamed Southwest and California. Told in a vivid first-person account, it is the exciting story of a young man discovering a brand new kind of life.
Edward Warren, by Sir William Drummond Stewart. A British lord’s tales of his travels with the mountain men. One of the few first-hand accounts of the West before white people arrived. A must read for American history buffs and anyone interested in the adventures and lives of the original Mountain Men.
Read and step into a past that it is lost to us, so civilized and used to comfort, to imagine. Read and hear the voices of those who followed their dreams, as crazy as others often thought they were. The very best kind of dreams!