Tracks of Hope: A Memoir

by Don Bendell

Don Bendell is a successful author and owns and operates martial arts schools in southern Colorado, but many of his activities in his life equipped him to be a tracker. That talent has been used on many occasions to locate lost hikers, missing animals, and fugitives. Very active in Boy Scouting and bow hunting in his early life, Don was a US Army Special Forces (Green Beret) officer, a licensed Colorado big game guide and outfitter, and did countless hours of research for his ten westerns about a famous cowboy tracker, Chris Colt. Several of the searches Don has been on have been very high profile national news stories, so many people asked him to write a book about those searches from his point of view.

This book clearly illustrates some of the high drama and adventures a modern day tracker goes through and answers many questions about some of the searches he took part in. This memoir is a true tale of the modern day west written by a modern day cowboy.

272 pages, Nook

Published August 21, 2011

About the author

-Speaker and best-selling author of 30 books with over 3 million copies in print plus a successful feature film
- Don just co-wrote a brand new book available on Amazon Kindle and Kindle Select, soon available in print on Amazon (September, 2019). A self-help motivational memoir, it is entitled "Cowboy the F Up! How to be a Real Man in Today's World."
-International Karate & Kickboxing Hall of Fame: 1995 inductee, Grandmaster Instructor in 5 martial arts
- US Army Special Forces (Green Beret) officer, Vietnam disabled vet
- Master of Science, Business - Leadership, Grand Canyon University, 2011
Bachelor of Science, Business, Colorado Christian University, 1997
- owns the Strongheart Ranch, Florence, Colorado
- 6 children, 11 grandchildren, Married to Author and Social Psychologist, Dr. Janet Bendell.

Reviews

[Robert Enzenauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don Bendell's latest venture into non-fiction reminds me of one of my favorite books by Louis L'amour LAST OF THE BREED -a fictionalized version of an Air Force veteran and native American, born out of time, who when his experimental aircraft is forced down in Russia and he escapes a Soviet prison camp, he must call upon the ancient skills of his Indian forebears to survive the vast Siberian wilderness. Except, of course, with Don Bendell's personal memoir, it'a all true. He is the "real deal" - a modern day cowboy tracker, romantic and brave, riding an Indian pony, and certainly no less the hero of his many COLT westerns. Forty years later, he is still living the motto of his early Special Forces career - "de opresso liber" - to liberate the oppressed. I simply wonder who will play Don Bendell in the movie version.