His dream was to build magnificent steamboats to ply the rivers of the American frontier. But when Jean Talon began his journey westward, he stumbled upon a deadly conspiracy involving a young woman’s search to find her missing brother, and a ruthless band of renegades. Led by the brazen Baron Torville, this makeshift army of opportunists is plotting a violent takeover of the Louisiana Territory. Jean swears to find a way to stop this daring plan. If he doesn’t, it will not only put an end to all his dreams; it will change the course of history—and destroy the promise of the American frontier.
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Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
"He killed me," the dying man had said."He stabbed me."Those words stayed with young Jean Talon as he journeyed westward, finally reaching the Missouri in search of a simple and honest life building river boats.But the stranger died.And that meant unraveling a deadly knot that tied together a vicious renegade's army, the Louisiana Purchase, and the missing brother of a beautiful, headstrong woman.Too near the truth to break away, Jean Talon turns in the tools of his trade for a far more dangerous kind of work--the kind that either gets men killed or earns them a new home in a violent, untamed land.
--This text refers to the
Mass Market Paperback
edition.
About the Author
Louis L’Amour is undoubtedly the bestselling frontier novelist of all time. He is the only American-born author in history to receive both the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal in honor of his life's work. He has published ninety novels; twenty-seven short-story collections; two works of nonfiction; a memoir, Education of a Wandering Man; and a volume of poetry, Smoke from This Altar. There are more than 300 million copies of his books in print worldwide.
--This text refers to the
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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.
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.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Implausible tale, which in itself isn't bad, just doesn't quite gel together,
This review is from: Rivers West: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)
Jean Daniel Talon, descendent of a pirate leaves his home in Quebec to make his fortune. He is a shipwright by trade and carries his tools with him to the bustling new town of Pittsburgh to get work. He has been rejected by his long time sweetheart who has chosen a richer man in his stead. Instead of languishing for love he moves on, but finds a man brutally murdered. In the mans dying gasps he brings Talon into a plot which turns out to be something to do with annexing Louisiana. This is all set in the time of teh Louisiana Purchase when Louisiana was an awful lot more than the small state it now is in the south, this was a sizeable chunk of land going right into the middle of the United States.Talon meets up with Jambe de Bois, a one legged man who is mysterious about his past but proves reliable to Jean. He also meets up with the annoyingly independent Tabitha Marjoribanks who insists on treating him as a common servant and being rather distasteful to him. she is in search of her brother Charles who has gone missing. They all travel together as far as Pittsburgh, it becomes apparent to them that they are being followed with evil intentions in mind and must take side trails to avoid being robbed or worse. Even in Pittsburgh Jean finds himself badly assaulted and cast adrift - luckily he is picked up by a man and his daughter who are also looking for Charles Marjoribanks. Macklem who is being sought by many people and is the centre of the plot has managed to envigle his way onto Tabitha Marjoribanks steam boat in search of her brother. It seems that she deliberately allowed him to captain the boat although the reason is not really explained. Anyway, it all comes to a head and Jean has a bit of fisticuffs with Macklem, whom he betters - and then for some reason Tabitha Marjoribanks decides she rather likes after rejecting him for the entire book up to the last page. I really enjoyed the adventuring derring-do of the story but the actual tale was implausible and the ending kind of inexplicable.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
First Draft For A Better Novel,
By
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This review is from: Rivers West: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)
Even novels with great plots need second drafts. "Rivers West" starts out so promisingly it almost hurts reading the last 70 pages, when author Louis L'Amour becomes so obviously disengaged with his creation it becomes a matter of "last to leave turn off the lights."It's 1821, and from the Quebec coast a young shipwright named Jean Talon lights off for Pittsburgh and what he hears are fresh opportunities making boats for the great rivers of the American West. Crossing a corduroy road at night, he discovers a dying British officer, recently stabbed, who tells him of a very bad man, one Jean later learns has plans to steal the fruit of the Louisiana Purchase from the new American republic. Before he can make up his mind about much of anything, events conspire to plunge Jean into the heart of the plot. Right from the beginning, when L'Amour sets the scene with his description of "a ghost trail, a dark trail, a trail endlessly winding" to its atypically-set time and place (at least 50 years earlier and 1000 miles eastward of the usual setting for a L'Amour western), you get the feeling that the author was out to try something different. Using the idea of someone planning to steal the West away from the nascent United States draws your interest, even if the actual method of doing so is never explained. You forgive a lot with L'Amour, because you want what his readers might call the good parts, strangers becoming friends amid the sagebrush, fights to the death, and reminders of a simpler time. So when Jean is quickly befriended by a cheesy pirate character with a pegleg and "Argh matey" dialogue, you enjoy the Walter Scott spirit more than you mind the implausibility. But the plot oddities keep coming, like friends and enemies Jean instantly recognizes without explanation. Worst of all is the female heroine, whose thorough obnoxiousness around the hero is explained away by one of his buddies suchways: "If you're going to have steam in the kettle, you've got to have fire in the stove." The sketchiness of L'Amour's narrative gets in the way of your enjoyment most. He takes little time to fill in plot points that seem promising. There's a very cool steamboat that resembles a "great black serpent" on which the villain rides, but little is done with it, or for that matter, with the villain. At several points, Jean is cut off from his friends, episodes L'Amour too obviously uses to fast-forward the plot. There's a scene where Talon is befriended by some Omaha, but it goes nowhere except to show L'Amour's readers that he realized he was writing in 1975, when respecting Indians was expected of Western authors. There are good moments here, particular in the scene-setting first half, and a reader with a fertile imagination can use it as a casting-off point for his or her own daydreamt adventures. L'Amour had a fine imagination, too, and it deserved better exercise than he gave it here.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good book,
By
This review is from: Rivers West: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)
This is not one of my favorite L'Amour books, but it is a very good book. As another reviewer has said, the story is implausible, but that, to me, is no detraction; the story is well told and generally entertaining. What else can you wish?
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