Customer Reviews

Down the Long Hills

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

When the kids are stranded,after the wagon train massacree,they have limited resources to sustain themselves,but...they do have the magnificent red stallion,who lives for the young boy...trailed by an indian brave plus ruthless outlaws,they make their way accross the vast,seemingly endless prairie...throw in a renegade bear and rapidly approaching cruel,bitter winter conditions,this story comes together in a"hurriedly turning the next page"climax....FIVE STARS+

You cannot put this books down. I try to forget it so I can read it again every few years. Not like L'Amour's other books, the shoot em up, good guy gets the girl. This one is different.
Not that I have the most exalted taste, but I was an English major and now am a librarian, so I have read a few books...This is a winner.
Anyone age 10 and up can read it and love it. Read it to kids a little younger than that.

DOWN THE LONG HILLS won famed western writer Louis L'Amour the Golden Spur Award and it is a very special read. Many times misclassified as a book for children it is a book for all ages who enjoy the heroism of the West at its finest.
The main characters are two children and a horse who against all odds make their way though a winter storm because the young boy knows his father will be looking for him. Luck, craftiness, and observation give them the skills to follow their trail.
One of the best books to begin if you have just discovered the storytelling skill of Louis L'Amour.
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DOWN THE LONG HILLS is a story of courage, passion and drive and who cares if the hero in question is but seven years old. Good literature was never about strict adherence to historical or physical fact. We usually call those history or science, respectively.

No, in this book L'Amour seems to let his confident writing skills and his imagination run free. He asks the reader to imagine what would happen if a frontier-trained lad, Hardy Collins, was forced to make his way cross country with nothing more than a three-year-old girl, Betty Sue Powell, a wonderful, almost magical horse, Big Red and a head filled with the knowledge gained from working side-by-side with a loving but tough western father, Scott Collins.

Together, Hardy, Betty Sue and Big Red brave everything from the weather to a grizzly to scummy horse thieves, all the while being tracked by a Cheyenne brave who wants this horse of horses. The story flows extremely well culminating in a classic L'Amour showdown.

A great western for the entire family.

And if you ever get a chance to see the movie of the same title you'll love it too. It's about as faithful an adaptation to an original book as I have ever seen.

Douglas McAllister

Down the Long Hills is as far as I know, the only book Louis L'Amour wrote where the main characters are kids, little kids at that.
I have now read perhaps a hundred books by L'Amour and I have enjoyed every single one of them, even if I did find a few of them to be not nearly as good as most of them. This one though, Down The Long Hills, it is my favorite! After I'd read it I gave a copy to my sister, who is a second grade teacher. She read it and loved it too, and I doubt if she had ever read any Westerns before. She was so impressed on how tough the little boy and little girl in the story were...at how much they knew, compared to children now who have things so much easier. My sister is now reading Down the Long Hills to her own classes, a few pages each day, and the kids are all captivated by it.
I fully expect that if this book were promoted as a kids' book, or as a young adult book, that it would become a huge, smash it. But don't think that the book is just for kids because it isn't at all. Adults will love this book too, for sure.
I am a writer myself with five published books to my credit and I know and understand how difficult it is to write a book where the action just jumps off the page. No writer of Westerns was more a master of the craft than Luis L'Amour, and this little book may well be his finest.
All of Louis L'Amour's books are fun to read and action packed but this story really gets to you. The first few pages of Down the Long Hills are as well crafted as any novel I've ever read. The reader is immediately tossed head over heels right into the action and the fast paced adventure never lets up for a second. Down the Long Hills is a wonderful, marvelous tall tale, an all around terrific read. I recommend it highly!

I've stopped reading L'Amour novels because they don't hold my interest. I much prefer his short stories. But this novel was different. It engaged me from the start and didn't let go. The ending was a bit flat, but it didn't ruin the book. It remains on my shelf when all others have been sold to used bookstores.

Louis L'Amour has always been a favorite. I purchased this book for my ten-year old great nephew...starting another generation reading L'Amour! This book is great because it has a young boy as the central figure. L'Amour was about telling a good story and teaching good values at the same time.

A short book by today's standards but a reminder, to me at least, that a good story doesn't need to be 400 plus pages to be a good novel.

Down The Long Hills is a story about two children being escorted across the west, one a three year old crossing with her parents, and the other a seven year old boy crossing with that family and many others on the way to where his pa had prepared a place for him out in Fort Bridger. The wagon train gets attacked by Indians and the children have to push on alone across Wyoming in fall with winter setting in against increasingly mounting odds with nothing but a sack of food, a knife and a horse.

It was also a lot of fun to read about this little boy braving Wyoming and crossing the entire state all by himself with a three year old to take care of on top of it. Today you would never have heard of such a thing. A child getting lost out in the desert would be a death knell and even with a huge search party might never be found. This story was about three men traveling together to find the children across a whole state and yet they seemed to have better odds.

That was the not fun thing about the story. It seemed almost too much to be believed. The things they faced got crazier and crazier (Indians, wild animals, outlaws, freezing cold, little food) and yet they still kept right on surviving relatively unscathed. It was more than could be believed. I was willing to follow along for the ride though, because who wants to read about a bunch of kids that go off to die a horrible death?

I read Down The Long Hills to my two Grandchildren. Both Boys ages 4 and 6 were spell bound by this story of a little boy and girl so near their age who survived in the wilderness after their parents and friends were massacred. The two boys are true out-door country Texans and would stay out all day long every day if their parents would let them so the story really peaked their imaginations.