Utah Blaine [Import] [Hardcover]

Louis L'Amour (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 292 pages
• Publisher: Ulverscroft; Large Print Edition edition (1976)
• ISBN-10: 0854564292
• ISBN-13: 978-0854564293
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Captures range-war violence and high-desert beauty., August 29, 1999

By 

bigbook "bigbook" (Gig Harbor, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Utah Blaine: A Novel (Paperback)

A great L'Amour title, originally published in 1954 under the name Jim Mayo. As he did so often, L'Amour takes a stock dime-western situation, the range war, and weaves his story telling magic! The title character, a legendary town tamer, is very well fleshed out as he attempts to keep a pack of land-grabbing jackals from dividing up two of the largest, richest cattle ranches in Arizona. First they murder the owners...then the gang comes gunning for Blaine! Solid plot, great dialogue and some of L'Amour's best descriptive passages painting the rugged beauty of the mountains and valleys of the American Southwest.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Utah Blaine - no Mormon in him, August 31, 2001

By 

"elfman20" (Folsom, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Utah Blaine: A Novel (Paperback)

This gunslinger doesn't take crap from anyone. Stuck in a middle of a range war, he delivers what others fear, his gun's fury. Although L'amour carries some unbelievable moments in this story, there is a fun flowing read to the story.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Michael J. Blaine, Gunfighter, August 4, 2005

By 

Kay's Husband (Virginia, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Utah Blaine: A Novel (Paperback)

This book was originally published by Ace books back in 1954 under the name Jim Mayo, when Louis was bridging the pulp western magazines of the day, while later moving into his long running contract with Bantam Books. The setting of the book is central Arizona in the Verde River Valley, pretty much between Blood Basin and the Mazatzal Mountains.

For the time of its writing, Utah Blaine is a very good book both in style and content. In general the book tells the story of Joe Neal's 46 Connected ranch and range of 300,000 prize acres of rangeland, with approximately 50,000 head of cattle on that range. An unsuccessful attempt is made on Joe's life, and later he is killed. The playing out of all the bad guys against the good guys, which at times number only 3, is the matrix of this western.

I'm an inveterate western reader, and in my humble opinion a reader just has to 'suspend the ole disbelief' when reading these shoot-em-ups. Louis was one of the best of western writers, but he had some equals, and a few even better. One thing that I did not care for in this western is the name of Utah Blaine's eventual girlfriend/wife: Angie Kinyon; that name is too close for me at least, to the later Ange Kerry with Tell Sackett, in a couple later Sackett novels.

Also, after "Rip" Coker has been gunshot, suffering 11 wounds, he is sidelined from the story. And at book's ending, we still are not told whether "Rip", will live or die, although it seems that he will pull through. Coker, as a Ranger, also appears in several of the Chick Bowdre Texas Ranger stories, too.

Another item is the cache of supplies and ammunition, Utah says that they will be stashed in three separate locations, but never, ever, gives us more than the one original location at Cypress Butte. And never does he resupply anywhere near Cypress Butte, in general most of his resupply comes from a couple of ranch houses.

Please do not, I repeat, DO NOT, take any of these as slams against the book. These are only incongruities that can exist in any number of Louis' books. I've read that at any one time he may have had as many as 4 typewriters going with a different story in each one. Would not be difficult to leave a few items ragged when swinging intermittenly from one typewritter to another.

Louis L'Amour wrote some fine, classic, western stories while many others of his are only 3-star jobs; however, in the main I find him to be one of the best. One reviewer here said just to skip this book, with that I cannot agree, for this is no better nor any worse than most 3 or 4 star westerns. And at present I have several thousand westerns on my shelves.

Read this one and enjoy, that is afterall, mainly why Louis spent his lifetime writing more than 100 of them.

Semper Fi.