Beauty for Ashes: A Novel of The Mountain Men FROM THE PUBLISHER
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.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Blevins's (So Wild a Dream) 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. Agent, Nat Sobel. (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A second in the author's Rendezvous series (So Wild a Dream, not reviewed), about the early days of the fur trade. Blevins (Westward: A Fictional History of the American West, 2003, etc.) is often mystical when writing about Indians, and his gritty fiction brings to mind the fur-trade novels of Frederick Manfred (Lord Grizzly, 1954) and Vardis Fisher (Mountain Man). In So Wild a Dream, set in the 1820s, Pittsburgh's white-haired, impressionable young Sam Morgan, finding Pennsylvania dull, lights out for the West, becomes a hand on a riverboat, has many adventures on the frontier, then heads into the unmapped West on a grueling 700-mile trek, alone and on foot, across the Great Plains to the Rockies, where men blaze trails across the mountains. Between Missouri and the Pacific, he falls in with various Indian tribes and learns crafts for living in the wilds. Now, after two years trapping beaver, he goes home, fights with his family, heads back west. Downhearted, he dreams himself joined to a Spirit Buffalo (named Samalo), decides to seek his beloved Indian maiden Meadowlark, and sets off with his pet coyote to find her. Sam and three friends, including Third Wing, a Pawnee, go up Wind River to look for her. Meadowlark is glad to see him, but Sam is humiliated by a Crow archery game that awards him the name No Arrows. Nor can he ride as well as Crow. When another Crow courts Meadowlark, Sam must become a real Crow if he's to win her, but after he's captured by Lakota Sioux (and escapes), he's too poor to woo her. And he's responsible for a young Crow's death. Meadowlark's parents believe a prophecy that White Men will overrun the land: Thus Meadowlark mustn't marry a White. But soon thePacific beckons them both. The glory years of frontier life, fresh and rich.
Home
