Beauty For Ashes - A Novel of the Mountain Men

by Blevins, Win

First Edition

Price: $25.00
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NY: A Forge Book/Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2004. First printing of the Forge hardcover edition. Second novel in the Rendezvous series featuring trapper Sam Morgan. The first novel in the Rendezvous series, 'So Wild a Dream' was the winner of the 2004 Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. 384pp. Navy blue faux cloth, gilt spine lettering. Dust jacket price 25.95. Signed by Blevins to half-title page. Book and Dust jacket appear in fine, unread condition. No remainder markings. " Win Blevins [is] that great chronicler of the American West. [He] has long since won his place among the West's very best." - Tony Hillerman. Win Blevins is the author of a dozen novels, several volumes of informal history, and 'Dictionary of the American West'. In 2003 Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers named him Writer of the Year, 'Stone Song: a Novel of the life of Crazy Horse', won the 1995 Spur Award and a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for Best Fiction. 'So Wild a Dream', won the Spur award for Best Novel of the West in 2004. "Trapping beaver was the major source of income for mountain men in the Rocky Mountain West of the 1820s -- the luxuriant, sought-after pelts could make a man rich. But it was a dangerous way to make a living: winter blizzards, hostile Indians, sickness, and starvation lurked at every point of the compass. Only a special brand of man could survive it all. After making a harrowing 700-mile journey alone and on foot from the Sweetwater River in Wyoming to Fort Atkinson on the Missouri River and finding a home in the fur trade, young Sam Morgan is becoming just such a man. Followed closely by Coy, his faithful coyote pup, and trapping with a brigade of mountain men, Sam seeks more than furs and wealth. He is searching for the love of his life, the Crow Indian woman Meadowlark, and with his companions -- the French-Canadian Gideon Dubois, the mulatto Jim Beckwourth, and the Pawnee Third Wing -- he heads for the Wind River country and the village of Meadowlark's people. Sam is put to every test in his journey to the Crow village: fights with Pawnee, Lakota and Blackfeet; captivity and escape from a Sioux camp, buffalo hunts, and the distrust of Meadowlark's family and tribe. He endures the sweat lodge and Sun Dance ceremonies that test his beliefs and self-confidence, and concocts a last-ditch, daring, and foolhardy scheme to win Meadowlark's hand. For all its page-turning action, 'Beauty for Ashes' is the unforgettable story of a boy who becomes a man by necessity in the cruel, beautiful, unexplored wilderness of the Old West." - dust jacket flaps. "Blevins's lively fur-trading tales of the American West continue with this rousing second entry in the Rendezvous series. In the early 1820s, white-haired 19-year-old Sam Morgan departs his native Pennsylvania hometown for the second time after returning from adventures in the West as a trapper. His homecoming was marred by family squabbling, and a disenchanted Sam sets out again promising never to return. He's on a mission of love to find Meadowlark, a virginal Indian maiden he left behind two years before. Upon reaching Meadowlark's village, Sam presents her with gifts and their reunion is joyous. But Sam's battle to keep her has just begun, and he struggles to learn to live in an alien culture. Undaunted by failure in a bow-and-arrow contest, he proposes to Meadowlark. But on a trapping excursion with Indian friends, Sam's group is violently ambushed by Lakotas, and Sam is seized and stripped of his possessions. He manages to escape, but now he has nothing to offer Meadowlark, who has since become otherwise engaged. A true willingness to absorb Crow family customs pays off with a happy ending. Sam's adventures are boyishly uncomplicated and vibrant, making this a rousing installment in a fine epic of the American frontier." - Publishers Weekly.. Signed by Author. First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket/Fine. Illus. by Dust Jacket Art By John Thompson; Dust Jacket Design By Howard Grossman/12E Design. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall.

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