Synopses & Reviews
Young Sam Morgan, serving his apprenticeship as a mountain man in the Rocky Mountains in the early 1820s, searches for Meadowlark, the Crow Indian girl he loves. At the Wind River village of Meadowlark's people, Sam finds her being courted by a Crow warrior named Red Roan. Sam realizes he must become more Indian than white man to win Meadowlark.
Taken prisoner by the dreaded Sioux, the Crows' mortal enemy, Sam escapes but loses everything except his faithful companion, a coyote pup. Sam must rebuild his life and his esteem among his Crow friends
Beauty for Ashes is an unforgettable love story and an action-filled adventure. There are fights against Pawnees, Sioux, and Blackfeet; a knife duel and horse race at the trappers' rendezvous; and a harrowing escape from captivity, torture and certain death by the Indian captors.
This is the memorable story of a boy becoming a man in the cruel, beautiful, unexplored wilderness of the Old West.
Review
"The glory years of frontier life, fresh and rich"
--Kirkus Reviews on Beauty for Ashes
"So Wild a Dream is a fabulous beginning of what promises to become a classic series that will be on college reading lists in history classes studying the fur trade era."
--Roundup Magazine
"The first volume in the Rendezvous Series, So Wild a Dream is a throughly enjoyable tale of survival in the wilderness of the Great American West in the early 19th century. So Wild a Dream is a story of amazing courage, endurance, and resourcefulness."
--Tennessean
Review
Questions for Discussion
1. What were Indian peoples attitudes toward interracial marriage? How were they different from attitudes today?
2. What were the racial and cultural backgrounds of the mountain men? What languages did they speak? Do you think the membership of Indian, Mexican, and black in their brigades changed their racial attitudes from the dominant ones of the time?
3. How did mountain men treat the Native peoples? How does this contrast with the treatment from the emigrants? From the army and the government?
4. The mountain men adopted Indian dress, often had Indian families, and sometimes accepted Indian religion. They were often criticized by Eastern Americans for having “gone Indian.” Do you share this view?
5. Sam Morgan had no interest in commerce or industrialization, but was fascinated by wild country and the skills needed to live there. Was Sam a reactionary in his own time? What is characteristically American, if anything, in his desire to journey to the unexplored West?
6. Do you think of the mountain men as living on the frontier, or beyond the frontier? How were they like and unlike the Westerners who came after them, emigrants, cowboys, miners, Mormons, sheepmen, soldiers, and so on?
7. Sam sought truth by going through a Sun Dance. What did that experience mean to him? Do you believe mystical insights are possible through such ceremonies? Potentially important? "The glory years of frontier life, fresh and rich" Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
In addition to the Rendezvous novels (
So Wild a Dream and
Beauty for Ashes),
Win Blevins, an authority on the Plains Indians and fur-trade era of the West, is author of
Give Your Heart to the Hawks,
Stone Song, his prize-winning novel of Crazy Horse, plus
Charbonneau,
Rock Child, R
avenShadow and others. He lives in Utah with his wife Meredith, also a novelist.