Books with title A GENTLEMAN OF COURAGE

James Oliver Curwood’s A Gentleman of Courage is the love story of two youngsters who are informally adopted by the residents of a community on an inlet off Lake Superior.Peter and Mona The boy, Peter MacRae, is the son of a man wanted for murder. He sends Peter to a friend who owns the lumber mill at Five Fingers before disappearing.Entering Five Fingers, Peter sees orphan Mona Guyon being molested. Although Aleck Curry is older and stronger than he, Peter rushes to her assistance, winning her everlasting devotion.Peter is required to prove his courage several more times before the novel ends.Peter and Mona are planning their wedding when Donald MacRae returns, weak and ill but longing for sight of his son. The police, led by Aleck Curry, are on his trail.Curwood has difficulty making the children’s behavior fit both their ages and the plot. Either they appear way too old or way too young.He draws other characters with such broad strokes they appear as caricatures. Fortunately Curwood includes enough action that the underdeveloped characters are not obvious until the book’s end.The novel is good enough to keep readers turning pages, but not good enough to make them remember what they read a week later.

Born in Owosso, Michigan he left high school without graduating but was able to pass the entrance exams to the University of Michigan where he studied journalism. In 1900, Curwood sold his first story while working for the Detroit News-Tribune. By 1909 he had saved enough money to travel to the Canadian northwest, a trip that provided the inspiration for his wilderness adventure stories. The success of his novels afforded him the opportunity to return to the Yukon and Alaska for several months each year that allowed him to write more than thirty such books.By 1922, Curwood's writings had made him a very wealthy man and he fulfilled a childhood fantasy by building Curwood Castle in Owosso. Constructed in the style of an 18th century French chateau, the estate overlooked the Shiawassee River. In one of the home's two large turrets, Curwood set up his writing studio. Curwood also owned a camp in a remote area in Baraga County, Michigan, near the Huron Mountains.An advocate of environmentalism, Curwood was appointed to the Michigan Conservation Commission in 1926. The following year, while on a Florida fishing trip, Curwood was bitten on the thigh by what was believed to have been a spider and had an immediate allergic reaction. Health problems related to the bite escalated over the next few months and infection set in that led to his death from blood poisoning.

A novel of love and adventure in a French-Canadian pioneer village on Lake Superior in the 1890s.James Oliver Curwood lived most of his life in Owosso, Michigan, where he was born on June 12, 1878. His first novel was "The Courage of Captain Plum" (1908) and he published one or two novels each year thereafter, until his death on August 13, 1927. Owosso residents honor his name to this day, and Curwood Castle (built in 1922) is the town's main tourist attraction. During the 1920s Curwood became one of America's best selling and most highly paid authors. This was the decade of his lasting classics, "The Valley of Silent Men" (1920) and "The Flaming Forest" (1921). He and his wife Ethel were outdoors fanatics and active conservationists.