Sun River [Mass Market Paperback]

Richard S. Wheeler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 1989 | Series: Sun River (Book 1)

They call him Mister Skye He's big, he's tough, and he knows the West as few others do the trails, the people, the weather - everything from which a tenderfoot needs to be protected. Skye's biggest problem is protecting people from themselves. Mister Skye has agreed, reluctantly, to lead a party of missionaries to the Blackfoot Nation: to get there, they must pass through land controlled by the Crow and patrolled by the Cheyenne. To get there, they must also stop fighting among themselves, fighting about everything: about the Roman Catholic priest who joined their party, about Mister Skye's two Indian wives who are traveling with them, about the items Mister Skye insists must be left behind. To get to where they are going, the missionary party will have to survive, and without Mister Skye - drunk or sober - they have no chance at all.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Richard S.Wheeler has written over fifty novels and several short stories. He has won four Spur Awards and the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in the field of western literature.

He lives in the literary and film community of Livingston, Montana, and is married to Professor Sue Hart, of Montana State University-Billings. Before turning to fiction he was a newsman and book editor. He has raised horses and been a wrangler at an Arizona dude ranch.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (July 15, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812510739
• ISBN-13: 978-0812510737
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #565,526 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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars epic, July 10, 2008

By 

R. Signal "AcousticEnergy" (AL) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sun River (Mass Market Paperback)

I first read this book 10 years ago, but never went on with the series. I decided to go back and reread this one. This book is an epic journey.

Not having read other books in the western genre, I can't compare this other such authors, but this novel stands very well on its own. It's very gritty: characters, and not just the 'bad' guys, are killed, tortured, and kidnapped. Parts of this sickened me. But there are interspersed moments of real joy, and Wheeler's descriptions of the vast open wilderness is amazing.

My only criticism is some of the characters come close to being 2D cardboard cutouts, but there is a lot of character development here to balance it out. Also, this is a book about the journey, not the destination, so don't expect all loose ends to be tied up. Recommended.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sun River, December 24, 2008

By 

Evan the Dweezil (A Place-Sort Of, Montana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sun River (Mass Market Paperback)

Wheeler's writing makes the Montana prairies sing with life. Every time I read him, I'm taken aback by his ability to make his words a reality.

The group Mister Skye leads into Blackfeet country is an interesting mix, teetering on the edge of implosion, but somehow managing to not fall completely apart. The characters James and Silas stand out. Both of these men get what they earn. Sun River, the first entry in the Skye's West series, is just as good as any of the others written after it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Religion on the prairie, January 18, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Sun River (Mass Market Paperback)

This is an excellent book. To braid together Plains Indians, Methodists, Catholics and at least one free thinker (Skye himself) as skillfully as this, a person has to be more than well-read. It takes a touch as delicate as cat whiskers to show the sources of heroism and weakness in their beliefs. I didn't see any blunders here.

I particularly liked the Methodists, who were highly assorted, and that their madman -- who could easily have become totally unlikeable -- was revealed as a man who ached and yearned for Love, but went about seeking it in all the wrong ways. The priest is a little unreal, but maybe that just sticks out because priests aren't what they used to be. In this book he is the one who pays the highest price, but that torture becomes a gift.

Probably the most moving core of the book is about marriage, which is also about commitment and ceremony. Skye's happily polygamous marriage and the Reverend Cecil's ever-renewing marriage are purely inspirational. I don't often cry when reading Westerns, but when Cecil's Esmeralda was returned from captivity, her welcome was so exquisitely described that I yearned to believe it could be true.

As always, the poetry of land and weather, now so sweet and then so deadly, penetrates the story, giving it new meanings and levels.