THE DAYBREAKERS [Mass Market Paperback]

Louis L'AMOUR (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Bantam Books (1985)
• ASIN: B000IZZADY
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)

More About the Author

"I think of myself in the oral tradition--as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man in the shadows of a campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered--as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs, including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, and miner, and was an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontiers and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are more than 300 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

The recipient of many great honor and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist to ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour publishing tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well, what do you want, anyway??, October 20, 2005

By 

Catfish (Stillwater, OK USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Daybreakers (Sacketts) (Mass Market Paperback)

I give this novel five stars, but with a sigh and a caveat. You can't compare L'Amour to anyone but authors in the Western genre, and he is head and shoulders above most of them. I have read many books in my day; some of them uplift me, some of them have changed me, some of them have made me a better person. Louis L'Amour's books will do none of these things...BUT! You will seldom find a more entertaining read. Open a L'Amour western and the action just thunders off the pages. You can almost smell the gunsmoke. His action scenes are well -written, and, in spite of what another reviewer said,

his characters are better drawn than those by most other western writers. Yes, they are fictional, and the things they do are largely fictional. L'Amour writes of a Wild West that should have been, full of bad guys but also full of plain-speaking, mountain-bred, six-shooter totin' Good Guys who are more than capable of taking care of themselves. The satisfying thing in these novels is that you just know the bad guys are going to run right up against Our Hero and boy, are they gonna pay for their misdeeds...! You can't wait for that to happen, and L'Amour delivers the goods in each and every book. This Sackett novel is probably the best of the series and is a great example of L'Amour's writing. Read this, enjoy it at the level at which it should be enjoyed, and get ready to ride the wild west with the Sackett boys!!

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars with the wind at my back and a day to kill, June 18, 2001

By 

federico iniatel (los angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Daybreakers (Sacketts) (Mass Market Paperback)

I read The Daybreakers in one sitting and not since discovering Conrad,Asimov,and Vonnegut in high school had a book so strongly introduced me into a new genre of fiction. The Daybreakers is the best Sackett book I have read to date. With beautiful imagery of the new american west and thoughtful page devotion to its characters and setting. It has great gunfights and a quick-paced story to back them up. I now find myself as big a fan of the warm frontier years as I was of the cold sterile future. I recommend this book to anyone with enough time to give this great story.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An epic tale of family, hardship, and acheiving manhood., December 25, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Chicago, IL.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Daybreakers (Sacketts) (Mass Market Paperback)

The Daybreakers is truly a western classic. It tells the tale of two brothers who find themselves alone heading west trying to find a better life for themselves and their family. Along the way they encounter battles from Indians, Renegades, Outlaws, Land-Grabbers, and the betrayel of a good friend. An adventure filled tale packed with gunsmoke, Spanish Haciendas, and the perfume of lovely senoritas. You will not be making a mistake with this one, a prime example of how action/adventure should be. Lamour is at his best with The Daybreakers.