Downriver: A Barnaby Skye Novel (Barnaby Skye Novels) [Mass Market Paperback]

Richard S. Wheeler (Author)

Book Description

Series: Barnaby Skye Novels | Publication Date: December 30, 2003

Barnaby Skye, seaman-deserter from the Royal Navy, Rocky Mountain trapper, and frontiersman extraordinaire, brings his Crow Indian wife, Many Quill Woman (whom Skye calls "Victoria"), to the trappers' rendezvous on the Popo Agie River of Wyoming in the summer of 1838. There, he learns that the beaver-trapping business is dying out. When he is offered a chance to become a post trader in Victoria's homeland, he makes the journey to St. Louis to present himself as a candidate for the job to the mighty managers of the Upper Missouri Outfit.

The 2,000-mile voyage down the Missouri River steamboat Otter is a lesson in survival to Skye and Victoria. The river offers dangers at every turn--but the real danger lies in another passenger on the paddlewheel steamer, the Creole fur brigade leader Alexandre Bonfils. This nefarious man, with influential relatives in St. Louis, is a rival for the job Skye is seeking and is determined to be the only candidate by the time the Otter reaches the city.

Adding to Skye's problems is his rescue of a Cheyenne woman, Lame Deer, who needs to get to St. Louis to find her missing husband--a white man who has deserted her and their two children to marry into a prominent St. Louis family.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wheeler's westerns just keep getting better and better. This is the 12th novel in the writer's Spur Award-winning Barnaby Skye series, chronicling the adventures of mountain man Skye and his Crow Indian wife, Victoria. Last year's novel, Going Home, had the hard-drinking, earthy, resourceful couple on the run from trouble in Mexican California. Six years later, in 1838, Skye and Victoria are on their way from the Rocky Mountains to St. Louis so Skye can compete for a wilderness job as a post trader with the powerful and ruthless American Fur Company. The journey will cover 1,500 miles by land and river and is fraught with peril and treachery. This time, however, Skye's enemies are not Indian warriors seeking a stand-up fight, but white men who have secrets, wealth and reputations to protect, and who prefer to lie, cheat and stab a foe in the back rather than look him in the eye. That is not the mountain justice Skye is used to, and he will have to learn new skills to survive in the civilized white man's business world. Complicating the trip is a Cheyenne Indian woman determined to find her white husband in St. Louis, not realizing he has abandoned her to marry a suitable white woman. A slick, manipulative Creole trader; a brutal, ham-fisted steamboat captain; and a likable whiskey smuggler add high drama to the trip. This is the best of the Skye novels so far, an adventure mystery full of suspense, action, historical color and careful portrayals of men and women facing hard choices amid uncertainty and danger. Wheeler is a master of character and plot, and this novel showcases his talents at their peak.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This installment in the series finds Barnaby Skye and his Crow wife, Victoria, leaving their familiar Rocky Mountain home in the early 1800s to travel 1500 miles to Saint Louis so he can apply for a job as a post trader with the American Fur Company. During their trip downriver, the Skyes encounter deceitful and ambitious men who are bent on not only ruining Skye's chances at getting the position but on taking his life as well. A treacherous paddleboat captain promises them passage and then abandons the couple and their Cheyenne friend at the first opportunity, leaving them with nothing but the clothes on their back. They are rescued by a pair of likable traders who offer to take them the rest of the way on their barge. Wheeler always does a masterful job of weaving Indian lore and culture into these stories. It is also refreshing to see America through the eyes of the protagonist, a transplanted British subject who deserted from the British Navy. The exciting and perilous journey occupies most of the book, saving their arrival in St. Louis for the last few chapters. Teens who enjoy fiction about the Old West will enjoy this story and see how two people from diverse cultures facing hardships and dangers are able to make a life for themselves in a rapidly changing world.
Patricia White-Williams, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books (December 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081256586X
• ISBN-13: 978-0812565867
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,649,622 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard Wheeler began a late-in-life career as a novelist at age fifty, and by his seventy-fifth year had written seventy novels. He began life as a newsman and later became a book editor, but turned to fiction full time in 1985.

He started by writing traditional westerns but soon was writing large-scale historical novels and then biographical novels. In recent years he has been writing mysteries as well, some as Axel Brand. His Lieutenant Joe Sonntag series occurs in 1940s Milwaukee, and focuses on life in a big, smoky industrial city just after World War Two.

He has won numerous awards, including the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in the literature of the American West, and also six Spur Awards from Western Writers of America. He has received more Spur Awards than any other living author.

He grew up in Wisconsin and migrated West, holding newspaper jobs in Phoenix, Oakland, Carson City, and Billings. His wife, Sue Hart, is an English professor at Montana State University in Billings.

He has been focusing more and more on biographical novels. One of these, published in March, 2010, is called Snowbound, and is about the explorer John C. Fremont's tragic fourth expedition. It won a Spur Award.


For a quarter of a century he's largely made his living from writing fiction. That reality astonishes him. In his mid-seventies now, he is still dreaming up new stories.

Note: There are other Richard Wheelers writing books. One is an historian of the Civil War, and another writes histories of the Marine Corps, and another is a social scientist. Richard S. Wheeler is the novelist.