Customer Reviews

Ride The Moon Down: The Plainsmen

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I won't take up a whole lot of space except to say that Terry Johnston is just a treasure. He is always historically authentic, as good as the best of Elmer Kelton or Kirby Jonas, and in my opinion better than Louis L'Amour, with his bullet proof characters. You can believe the things Titus Bass did. There were, after all, some very tough people alive back then. But he wasn't superman, and he wasn't perfect. Anything by Johnston is a good bet! This is no exception.

As rendevous re-enactors, we have found Johnston's works to be just truly amazing in their accuracy. We have purchased every book he has put out and we still keep looking for the next one! Had to have them shipped special while living overseas. A true master of the word and history of the West. Good on ya Terry - keep on writing! The Armstrong Clan

when I first read one of his books, I couldn't put down and finally met the author himself and bought the whole collection give or take a book. I'm sitting down and reading everyone, it's good for history lessons on what not to do now. I recommend his books for the lure of the mountains that terry johnston brings out, so fresh that you'd think you was living it. thanks terry for the goot, really goot readin'....jake bell, wind river indian reservation, wyoming 99'

Hard to believe it, but Terry C. Johnston just keeps getting better and better. Most writers who take on an extended series with one main character run out of gas about midway and get stale and cliched. This is Johnston's seventh Titus "Scratch" Bass novel, and he manages to keep it fresh, and keep us fans interested and caring in the character we have grown to love. He does this by avoiding the cliches, and steeping us in actual history melded perfectly with a crackling good yarn. Titus Bass is no fire-breathing bullet-proof dime novel hero. He is a flawed character, an everyman living in dangerous and changing times. Johnston fleshes out even minor characters, and the action scenes taut and exciting. The scene where Titus is ambushed by the Arapaho, and even gets a hand pinned to the saddle by an arrow is one of the best written fight sequences in print. And Johnston is more than an action writer, he gets to the meat of the times, giving you a history lesson through the perspective of one life affected by falling beaver prices, the end of the fur trade, the start of the settlement migration westward, the beginning of the decline of the Indians' free life on the plains. Those who haven't read Johnston, you are missing the best since Will Henry, maybe the greatest of them all. Get to know Johnston, and Titus Bass.

Titus Bass was older than most when he came to the mountains in 1825. He had already experienced life as a Kentucky settler's child, a flat boat crewman on the Ohio & Mississippi rivers and a blacksmith's apprentice in early Saint Louis. Nevertheless, when he arrived in the Shining Mountains, he found his true home. Living life hard and one day at a time, surviving catastrophe after catastrophe, he has persevered not because he is some kind of superman, but because he has that tenacity necessary to live beyond the edge of civilization, where one miscalculation can mean sudden, violent death. Scratch has survived devious and evil partners, attacks by Indians and grizzly bears, the dreaded smallpox and the indifferent cruelty of nature itself. He has been shot, stabbed, cudgeled; even scalped. He has lived this life to the fullest. Finding his pleasure where he can--in Taos with its alluring Mexican maidens, in the tipi of a willing squaw, in the whiskey and camaraderie of the annual summer rendezvous. Finally, after years of trapping beaver as a partner with other "free men"--trappers beholden to no company--Titus Bass has found love and joy in the arms of his beloved Crow wife, waits-by-the-Water and his two small children, daughter Magpie and son, Flea. Even as they dodge sudden death, sometimes narrowly, this family finds happiness in one another and in the raw beauty of this breath-taking land that is the Rocky Mountains.

Now, after some fifteen years dodging death at the hands of Blackfeet, Arapaho, Sioux, even the harsh land itself, his forty-four-year-old body suffering the consequences of this harsh existence, Scratch and his family find themselves facing an enemy that even tenacity, courage and determination might not defeat. The beaver that have allowed Scratch and others--Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Jedediah Smith--survive and prosper in this hostile land are fast becoming scarce. Higher and higher must the trappers search for unmolested streams where they can collect their plews. At the same time, tiny worm in China weaves silk and creates an alternative to the beaver to create hats for fashion-conscious Europeans and Easterners.

Will Scratch be able to protect himself and his family from attacks by Blackfeet bent on revenge, the hate of his Crow brother-in-law, a devastating epidemic of small pox, the treachery of unscrupulous entrepreneurs bent on controlling the beaver trade, Sioux venturing into his territory and, perhaps the most terrifying event of all, the end of the beaver trade?

The answer to that question is what will keep the reader glued to the pages of this chapter of the saga of Titus Bass. Excitement and danger loom on every page until the reader finally turns the last one. Even then, is the question answered....?

The character of Titus Bass, as developed by author Terry C. Johnston, is not a hero in the classic sense, but by his very commonness looms large as an ordinary man who does extraordinary things to survive and protect his beloved family. This latest book in the mountain man series continues the excellent writing about the way it really was in the first half of the 19th century for those who dared brave the unknown and foreboding wilderness of the North American continent west of the Mississippi river, where few white men survived long. Johnston is a masterful story teller who presents not a glorified accounting of the early west, but tells it like it really was--terrifying and magnificent.

I found this story very well written and very interesting as an historical novel. I do feel however, that the author made it much longer than need be. The main and most maddening flaw I found in the book was probably not the authors fault, but was the fault of the publisher. The senopsis of the story on the back cover clearly lead one to believe that it was a story about a trapper (Titus Bass) searching for his family after they were kidnapped by Blackfoot Indians. It turns out however that out of 558 pages and 34 chapters, only one chapter (chapter 25) is devoted to the kidnapping and search of Titus's family. I feel that was very missleading and I now wonder what to expect from his other books. Chris Stone

This book was excellent. Tells the story of Titus Bass and his family and their adventures from Rendezvous to Rendezvous. What I like best about the character of Titus Bass is that he is a devoted family man and cares greatly about the Crow tribe, whom he is adopted and married into. This book should be made into film.

"Ride the Moon Down" is one of the sequels to Johnston's fantastic series about Rocky Mountain mountain man/free trapper Titus "Scratch" Bass and it is a rippling, action-packed book. I agree with another reviewer who feels that Johnston is the master of his craft and definitely outperforms Louis L'Amour and a cadre of other famed western authors.

This entry into the Titus Bass saga really shows Bass's dedication to his family and how love can cross many conventional barriers, race being one of them. I also found Johnston's written descriptions of the brutal and unforgiving Northern Plains and Rocky Mountain winter landscape and snows to be among the best, helping, as always, to establish a firm sense of place. This book is not to be missed.

Terry C. Johnston is one of my favorite authors of historical fiction. His attention to detail in each of his novels is amazing and extremely factual. I recommend all of his books in each of his series without reservation. Once you start reading you can't put them down.