Yellowstone Kelly: Gentleman and Scout

Yellowstone Kelly #1

by Peter Bowen

The beginning of the legend of Yellowstone Kelly, one of the Old West’s most out-sized personalities

Luther “Yellowstone” Kelly had one of the longest, strangest, and most breathtaking careers in the Old West. The intrepid scout’s talent for being in the right place at an exciting time would take him all over the world, from the Great Plains to Africa to the Philippines. Throughout his adventures, Kelly maintained a stoic outlook, a fierce wit, and a talent for survival that got him out of more than a few dangerous scrapes. 
Yellowstone Kelly: Gentleman and Scout, the first novel in Peter Bowen’s fast-paced series, finds Kelly hunting wolves with the Nez Percé while trying actively to avoid contact with just about everyone else. This plan quickly falls apart, and Kelly is hired by a group of Englishmen who need a guide for a buffalo hunt. Kelly soon finds himself swept further from home than he ever has been before, going from the Indian Wars to the Zulu Wars.

Genres: Westerns, Fiction

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 1987

About the author

Peter Bowen (b. 1945) is an author best known for mystery novels set in the modern American West. When he was ten, Bowen’s family moved to Bozeman, Montana, where a paper route introduced him to the grizzled old cowboys who frequented a bar called The Oaks. Listening to their stories, some of which stretched back to the 1870s, Bowen found inspiration for his later fiction.

Following time at the University of Michigan and the University of Montana, Bowen published his first novel, Yellowstone Kelly, in 1987. After two more novels featuring the real-life Western hero, Bowen published Coyote Wind (1994), which introduced Gabriel Du Pré, a mixed-race lawman living in fictional Toussaint, Montana. Bowen has written thirteen novels in the series, in which Du Pré gets tangled up in everything from cold-blooded murder to the hunt for rare fossils. Bowen continues to live and write in Livingston, Montana.

Reviews

[Charles van Buren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charles van Buren

TOP 1000 REVIEWER

A modern dime novel with better prose

August 18, 2019

Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Review of Kindle edition
Publication date: January 15, 2013
Publisher: Open Road Media
Language: English
ASIN: B00ARQXYMI
282 pages

This is an entertaining but heavily fictionalized novel based very, very loosely on real-life soldier, hunter, scout and frontiersman Yellowstone Kelly. The author drops the names of many other real-life people into the story but his history can not to be relied upon which is disappointing. I would have enjoyed it more had it been well researched historical fiction.

Mr. Bowen's characters and their stories are amusing. His dialogue, laced with humor, seems authentic but is filled with terms and words which cannot be safely used in public today. The only nationality or ethnic group which receives any sympathetic treatment in this novel is the American Indian.

Four or five stars if Mr. Bowen had given his fictional protagonist a fictional name. Making up stories about real people as did Ned Buntline and other dime novelists - three stars at best. In addition to the similarities to the old dime novels there is a little of George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman about this book. In fact the farther I read the more like Flashman Kelly became.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...don't read any of them fool books purports to tell you how do you get on. If they knew, they'd be out here making a thousand dollars a month, instead of busting pencils back where everybody is."

"There is no such thing as a pretty fence."

"I had seen another piece of history, and it was very much like others that I had known. Sad."

"I thought of Joseph and White Bird and Yellow Wolf and the Nez Perces. They should have been left alone. They was farmers and horse-breeders and good people. But that don't seem to matter much. I have seen whole tribes destroyed by whiskey and common measles. I chased them down, and I didn't like it much. It wasn't like I was there to save anything or make anything better. Hell, I liked the excitement and I liked the country, and I got to be a scout because I knew more about it than anyone else available. When I began, I was eighteen, same age as most of the boys in the Gettysburg Cemetery. If you go and look."

The late Peter Bowen was a writer (among some of his other talents) who lived in Livingston, Montana. He wrote the Yellowstone Kelly series which included four fictional historical novels from 1987 through 2001. "Yellowstone Kelly: Gentleman and Scout" begins the series with the protagonist's experiences fighting Native Americans under General Nelson Miles during the American Indian Wars and eventually concludes with events that occurred during the Anglo-Zulu wars in South Africa under the command of Lord Chelmsford.

I am not sure that I understood what I was opening myself up to when I started Bowen's first "Kelly" novel. I believe I was looking for a bit of humor with a western type setting, but then I began to realize it was more serious than that. Although Bowen writes his novel as if it were a memoir written by Kelly in his later years that lends to some morsels of backwoods wisdom, what I really garnered was a chapter of history through the eyes of this insightful frontiersman. It was as if this scout was a fly on the wall narrating history as it occurred around him with a backcountry bias. For Mr. Bowen to choose a scout for the primary character of his books was clever in that it developed someone who continues to witness events, but to not end up in hopeless danger resulting in his premature death.

The reader should know, however, that there really lived a "Yellowstone" Kelly, Luther Kelly in reality, and there is a memoir that was actually written by that individual, which you can obtain on Internet Archive (not Gutenberg for some reason). From glancing through that memoir, Bowen fictionalizes this western figure by expanding his experiences. From what I could see, the real Luther Kelly never was in Africa. On the other hand, what Bowen does is to take the fictionalized Kelly and place him in other historical settings which I have to admit is a bit of fun.

As I mentioned, these books also teach bits of frontier wisdom and, in addition, raise facts that I never realized, such as the size of a shell that was used in the Gatling Gun was an inch in diameter and weighed a sixth of a pound or that hippos are the most dangerous animals, by far, in Africa. Who knew. He also brings up some very interesting historical events such as the eventual demise of Napoleon IV.

Well, I could go on and on, but I believe it does bring up a good point. Sometimes a reader will learn more about history reading historical fiction than the dry old textbooks. Of course, when a reader does this, he/she might take the information with a grain of salt unless it is verified in one of those dry old textbooks. On the other hand, maybe even they aren't reliable, as we experience more often Orwell's Ministry of Truth. In any case, I recommend these books for what they are. Very enjoyable and entertaining reading with a backwoods type moral spun throughout.

[Caleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this novel by Peter Bowen, Luther "Yellowstone" Kelly travels all over the world and the U.S. He visits the Philippines and South Africa where he gets into battles with the Zulu. The story is based on the actual Luther "Yellowstone" Kelly. Bowen really brings to life all of Kelly's real life situations. Kelly worked as a scout for the army and also traveled around with the Wild West Show. This is a great book to read of you want to gain historical insight of what life was like back then.

[Raymond White · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all I'm a huge fan of Peter Bowen and consider his Gabriel Du Pre series masterpieces. This Yellowstone Kelly novel simply wasn't up to that high standard--but maybe Peter was still learning his trade when he write this. It was still a decent, entertaining read, just not the same quality I've come to expect from him.

[Bonnye Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book #1 of the Yellowstone Kelly Novels, I am delighted with this series, and can happily encourage friends and family to take it on. There is scarcely a chapter without a good chuckle, but the life and times covered are also appropriately realistic, and it is a story not to be put aside until you find a true stopping place. I wanted to read these stories before I watched the TV series, and just the reading of this first one may make the idea of TV redundant. But maybe not - Kevin Costner...
The American battles with our natives are at times very frank, as are those from Africa, but it is what it is. I must admit I didn't see the similarities between the battle of natives vs. invaders around the world in such frank terms until now. With several American natives in my family history, my sympathies were already very much set, but Kelly sure makes it easier to get riled up about it. This is a series I can highly recommend to friends and family. It's our history, like it or not.
Reviewed on November 24, 2024, at Goodreads, AmazonSmile, B&N, BookBub, and Kobo.

[Jay Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a delightful book. Yellowstone Kelly was from Oneida, New York and went West and was a character in pulp novels. This work of fiction is set in a two year period and involves his antics. All will be troubled by the mass killing of buffalo and wolves and the demise of the Indians. The author has researched the period well. It covers his hunts, visit home, escape to South Africa and the Zulu wars. Kelly is a card and there are many humorous sections. This is a worthwhile read.

[papasteve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wouldn’t consider this a western as much a period piece—almost historical fiction; it was funny and sad, describing a time “when men were men and women were women” in their most human and inhumane way possible.

[Chuck Whiteneck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked it.

[Janis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable story, but I won’t read more of the series. I enjoyed the dry humor of the book.

[Pancho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not one for the Church Ladies' Book club, but very funny.

[Allan Schefer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this book entertaining in the same vane as Little Big Man.

[Robert2481 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a surprisingly enjoyable “Flashman” copy cat from an American point of view. As such, it’s pretty good.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this humorous novel, historical figure Luther "Yellowstone" Kelly returns from the Philippine-American war in the late 1800s. He travels west, then east, then ends up in South Africa in time to be involved on skirmishes with the Zulus. Some liberties have been taken with historical fact, and the reader may be taken aback by Kelley's un-PC terminology, but this is an enjoyable lightweight read.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yellowstone Kelley was a mountainman and fur trapper in the American West. This is the story of his life.