Books with author Wiley Blevins

Into the untamed West came the mountain men. They explored the wide-eyed wilderness, crossed the Rocky Mountains, learned the ways of Native American tribes, trekked to the Pacific, and became the stuff of dreams. In SO WILD A DREAM, first book of the award-winning Rendezvous Series, we meet young Sam Morgan, and a cast of legendary historical characters. Sam has a hungry spirit and is pulled by the lure of adventure. Go for the ride! "Blevins possesses a rare skill in masterfully telling a story-to-paper. He is a true storyteller in the tradition of Native people."--Lee Francis, Professor of Native American Studies, University of New Mexico. In 1822, life in Pennsylvania feels hemmed in, and Sam nurtures the dream of a truly free life. Since the return of Captains Lewis and Clark, people are bubbling with stories about the far-off Shining Mountains. Sam gets a job on a riverboat, and the adventure begins.Along the way he finds companions and adventures. For guidance, an educated Delaware Indian and Captain William Clark himself. For friends, a con man, a madam, and an assortment of shaggy people who have tasted the waters of those mountains. Sam first learns the fur trade from Bible-toting Jedediah Smith and Irish Tom Fitzpatrick, both already becoming legends. He also learns from the Indians. At the Ree villages, he comes face-to-face with treachery and instant death. Among the Crows, he learns the love of a woman. From the Bois Brules, Snakes, Pawnees, and other tribes, he learns native crafts, lore, and mysticism.But Sam's best teacher is hard-won experience. He makes a grueling seven-hundred-mile trek, alone and on foot, across the Great Plains to Fort Atkinson on the Missouri River. On route, he survives the holocaust of a prairie fire and learns the price of survival in the pitiless Western wilds. Sam also learns something of who he is and of who he wants to become.SO WILD A DREAM was chosen by Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers as novel of the year. It also won the Spur award for best novel of the West.p>“Not since Frederick Manfred’s 'Lord Grizzly' and Vardis Fisher’s 'Mountain Man' has there been so gripping, authentic, and captivating a story of the men who matched the mountains of the Great American West. Win Blevins has long since won his place among the West’s very best.”–Tony Hillerman“No one since the great A. B. Guthrie, Jr, has a better feel for the world of the mountain man.”—Don ColdsmithBlevins’s sweeping vision of the American frontier is just plain irresistible.” —W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear, authors of People of the Owl.

"Beautiful. Blevins brings it all alive.” – The Los Angeles TimesThis is the remarkable story of an authentic adventurer, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. He lived his dream in clashing cultures—that of Native American vitality and that of high European society. He mastered both worlds, but was ultimately forced to choose between them. The son of Sacajawea, guide for Lewis and Clark, Charbonneau was born on the adventure, and born to explore.As an infant, he infant traveled from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean and back, carried along in the expedition's boats or upon his mother's back. As a child, Sacajawea sent her son to William Clark. There Charbonneau was raised in Clark’s posh society, had Jesuit schooling in St. Louis, and was later educated in Europe—he became the welcome guest of kings. Throughout his life, Charbonneau and Clark maintained an extraordinary relationship. Charbonneau became a cultured man, at ease in the gentile civilization of European courts. But he was a man of two dreams, and the Western wilderness pulled at his heart. Charbonneau became an American explorer, guide, fur trapper-trader, military scout during the Mexican-American War, alcalde (mayor) of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, and a gold prospector and hotel operator in Northern California. He spoke French and English, and learned German and Spanish during his six years in Europe. He also spoke Shoshone and other western Native American languages, which he learned first from his family and then during his years of trapping and guiding.CHARBONNEAU is a novel of epic scope and lyric intensity, of vivid human drama and vigorous adventure!REVIEWS “A gripping historical novel . . . Blevins weaves authentic and documented material with the fruits of an impressive empathy. The characters live not only as recognizable people in their times and places, but as figures as an allegory of the West. There is some beautiful writing here. Blevins brings it all alive!” – Los Angeles Times“Blevins captures both Charbonneau’s unique character and the full flavor of the American era in which he lived. From frontier hardships and the raw vigor of Native American life to the sensual and intellectual pleasures of high European society, ‘Charbonneau’ is a must-read novel of American resilience and intellect.” The Denver Post