A Copperhead Summer

by Mark Warren

Award-winning writer of Wyatt Earp, An American Odyssey , winner of the 2020 Will Rogers Medallion Award, a 2019 Spur Award Finalist and an "Editor's Choice" by The Historical Novel Society.

While Tyler Raintree's parents are divorcing, the mother hides her son from his abusive father at Camp Itawa in the mountains of north Georgia. There, young Tyler meets nineteen-year-old camp counselor Stoney St. Ney and Bobby Whitehorse, a full-blooded Cherokee man. These two staffers become the boy's bodyguards and teachers as they try to protect him and his mother from a father who has connections to organized crime. All seems to go well for a time, as Tyler is introduced to the forest and the ways of the Native Americans who had once lived on the land. When the mafia comes to the mountains to abduct the boy, the gangsters must step onto the foreign playing field of wilderness, where Stoney and Bobby are most "at home."
 
Praise for Mark Warren
"Woven with clarity and colorful prose, Warren leads readers on an odyssey . . ." — True West Magazine on Promised Land
 
"A good book offers the ultimate escape . . . armchair travel to those wild places of the imagination. Warren's book took me to places I had previously not expected to visit, but I'm really glad I went there. — New Zealand Booklovers on Promised Land
 
"Warren's novel paints a vivid picture . . . and its colorful similes will put a smile on any genre-fiction lover's face." — Booklist on Born to the Badge

344 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 8, 2024

About the author

Mark Warren is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Georgia. At Medicine Bow, his nationally renowned wilderness school in the Southern Appalachians, he teaches nature classes and primitive survival skills. The National Wildlife Federation named him Georgia’s Conservation Educator of the Year in 1980. In 1998 Mark became the U.S. National Champion in whitewater canoeing, and in 1999 he won the World Championship Longbow title.

Warren has written extensively about nature for local and national magazines. He lectures on Native American history and survival skills, and Western frontier history presenting at museums and cultural centers around the country. He is the recipient of the 2024 New Mexico – Arizona Book Award for his historical novel on Billy the Kid, A Last Serenade for Billy Bonney. His Wyatt Earp, An American Odyssey trilogy was honored by WWA’s Spur Awards, The Historical Novel Society, and the 2020 Will Rogers Medallion Awards. Warren is a 2022 Georgia Author of the Year recipient for his book Song of the Horseman (Finalist, Literary Fiction). Indigo Heaven, The Westering Trail Travesties, and Nate, The Texas Story are all Will Rogers Medallion Award winners.

Warren has twenty traditionally published books: from Lyons Press, Two Winters in a Tipi and Secrets of the Forest (a four-volume series on nature and primitive skills,) from Two Dot, Wyatt Earp, An American Odyssey, from Speaking Volumes, Indigo Heaven, Song of the Horseman, Last of the Pistoleers, A Tale Twice Told, Moon of the White Tears, A Copperhead Summer, The Last Real Place and A Tale Twice Told, and from Wolfpack, The Westering Trail Travesties, A Last Serenade for Billy Bonney, Nate Champion: The Texas Story, and Nate Champion: The Wyoming Story.

You can find out more about Mark Warren by visiting his website at www.markwarrenbooks.com.

Reviews

[Doug Berg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am going to review both "A Copperhead Summer" and "The Last Real Place" as they are companion books in Mark Warren's Camp Itawa Mysteries.

Mark Warren has established an award winning reputation as a writer of Western historical/ biographical fiction (Wyatt Earp, Billy Bonney, Nate Champion) and as an author of novels, largely western. He has now ventured into the mystery genre with the "Camp Itawa Mysteries." Two of these novels have been published, "A Copperhead Summer" and "The Last Real Place," with a third, "A Dance in the Devil's Rain," soon to be.

Camp Itawa is modeled after Warren's nationally renowned Medicine Bow Wilderness School in the Southern Appalachians near Dahlonega, Georgia. Stoney St. Ney, a counselor at the camp and the main character in these mysteries, along with his sidekick/mentor, Bobby Whitehorse, a full-blooded Cherokee employee at the camp, outwit a gang of organized criminals in "A Copperhead Summer" and aid in apprehending two teenage boys who carried out a mass school shooting in a North Carolina town in "The Last Real Place." In both mysteries, their wilderness survival skills of stalking, tracking and keen observation, skills possessed by Mark Warren and taught to hundreds of his Medicine Bow campers, serve them well.

Mark Warren's skills of character development and airtight plot structure are on display in these books. They are page turners.

[Mark Warren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike my protagonist, Stoney St. Ney, I did not have the advantage of a Cherokee mentor in my career as a teacher of primitive skills. How I would have treasured a “Bobby Whitehorse” in my life. But like Stoney, I put in many years of experiential education in the forests of Southern Appalachia. My teachers were books, leaders of plant workshops, and nature itself. Long ago, I made a personal pledge: After I study a subject on paper, I strike out into the wild to delve into the skill and learn it through my own failures and successes. These experiences help to fuel the pages that I write about Stoney. This means that a reader can absorb not only a good story (I hope you agree) but also learn about facets of tracking, foraging, fire creation, and other native skills that have been lost (largely) in our modern American culture.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great story from a great writer! This time a story about a summer camp whose characters come alive with feelings and emotions that can only be conveyed by one who has worked at and owned his own summer camp. Stoney and Bobby Whitehorse seem to be a combination of the author himself. Warren has said he has been told "write about something you know." He has done just that in "A Copperhead Summer."

[Reeca Ratcliff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this one about a camp in North Georgia I could relate to this and the story was very good!