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Plews
The American west is the birthplace of legends. Before the outlaws, lawmen, gamblers, and cowboys made their mark however, the lands west of the Mississippi were explored by a certain 'reckless breed' of individuals. Men we know as mountain men.
These doughty men who braved empty plains, forbidding mountain ranges, and turbulent rivers, did so seeking one thing: beaver pelts, or as they called them plews. Battered by extremes of weather, menaced by beasts with little fear of man, and harried by unpredictable Indians, the mountain men risked their lives to harvest the valuable furs.
Stories came downriver of a place where the beaver were abundant and the finest plews on God's earth could be found. The stories were sporadic however, as few men had ever trapped the area and lived to tell the tale. The place was called 'Three Forks' and was the home of the Blackfoot, the most feared tribe of Indians in the mountains.
Seasoned trapper Walter Hatcher knew that if a group were to trap the 'Three Forks' successfully it would be made up of the toughest bunch of men he could find. Trappers with cunning and courage beyond that of other men would have to come together in order to bring home the plews. If such an audacious plan were to be carried out, those who accomplished the feat would surely be known as the most daring of the 'reckless breed' and that is just what Hatcher sets out to do.
Almer Johnson did not consider himself reckless, or much of anything at all, as he works on the St. Louis docks. When an unexpected opportunity arises to join a fur trapping expedition the young man seizes the chance to make something of himself. Facing danger at every turn, Almer sets his poles for the mountains knowing he will be lucky if he makes it back with his scalp, but willing to take the risk for the plews.
These doughty men who braved empty plains, forbidding mountain ranges, and turbulent rivers, did so seeking one thing: beaver pelts, or as they called them plews. Battered by extremes of weather, menaced by beasts with little fear of man, and harried by unpredictable Indians, the mountain men risked their lives to harvest the valuable furs.
Stories came downriver of a place where the beaver were abundant and the finest plews on God's earth could be found. The stories were sporadic however, as few men had ever trapped the area and lived to tell the tale. The place was called 'Three Forks' and was the home of the Blackfoot, the most feared tribe of Indians in the mountains.
Seasoned trapper Walter Hatcher knew that if a group were to trap the 'Three Forks' successfully it would be made up of the toughest bunch of men he could find. Trappers with cunning and courage beyond that of other men would have to come together in order to bring home the plews. If such an audacious plan were to be carried out, those who accomplished the feat would surely be known as the most daring of the 'reckless breed' and that is just what Hatcher sets out to do.
Almer Johnson did not consider himself reckless, or much of anything at all, as he works on the St. Louis docks. When an unexpected opportunity arises to join a fur trapping expedition the young man seizes the chance to make something of himself. Facing danger at every turn, Almer sets his poles for the mountains knowing he will be lucky if he makes it back with his scalp, but willing to take the risk for the plews.
490 pages, Paperback
First published July 23, 2014
47 people are currently reading
26 people want to read
About the author
Arley L. Dial
6 books9 followersArley Dial was born in 1977 in Albuquerque N.M. Having lived most of his life in the southwest, Arley feels a deep connection with the land he calls home and the people who make it what it is. Arley lives in central New Mexico, and has never been successfully domesticated.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 31, 2015
A first rate book about the Mountain Men.
This is one of the most accurate books that I have ever read about the Mountain Man. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get a true depiction of the life & times of the Mountain Man.
This is one of the most accurate books that I have ever read about the Mountain Man. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get a true depiction of the life & times of the Mountain Man.
April 16, 2020
Initially, I wasn't sure what to expect from this story. I have been watching the Netflix show, Frontier, which details the trials and tribulations of the fur trade in Canada, the Native people, and of course Jason Momoa adds eye candy to that show and its story. While I knew this book was dealing with Beaver pelts (plews) in particular, and was not set in Canada, I expected some of the things I was reading to be similar.
This book did not disappoint me. It was a little slow in the beginning, but only because the reader needs to be introduced to all of the primary characters in the book and their respective part in the expedition from the Mississippi to the Rockies. There is a lot of violence in this novel, but the violence is appropriate for the setting. I like that the treatment of Native Americans that are encountered in the book is fair. Just as in any culture, there are good and bad natives. In this book there are good and bad people of all cultures and races represented. That felt realistic to me.
I learned a great deal about how the trapping process, which I am going to assume was researched and presented in an accurate manner. While I am disturbed by the process, I also understand that I am looking at the story through the lens of a different time period more critical of animal treatment.
This book kept my interest by drawing me back in with new conflicts throughout. The plot is clear, but within the plot there are separate story-lines for many of the main characters, each with an arc and a conflict that converge at different times throughout the novel. I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in what life was like before the West was anything but wild and unspoiled. This is not a cowboy story in any way. When I mention the wild west, that is not what I mean. I mean, forest, and barren plains, big rivers, deep snow, wild animals, and wild men.
I read the Kindle version of this book and my only complaint has to do specifically with that version. There were numerous errors and editing problems in the Kindle version of Plews. There were enough present that it was sometimes distracting to the reader. I kept thinking it was such a shame because the writing was quite nice. I know it happens, but I was quite disappointed in this version . Of course I do not fault Mr. Dial for this, however.
This book did not disappoint me. It was a little slow in the beginning, but only because the reader needs to be introduced to all of the primary characters in the book and their respective part in the expedition from the Mississippi to the Rockies. There is a lot of violence in this novel, but the violence is appropriate for the setting. I like that the treatment of Native Americans that are encountered in the book is fair. Just as in any culture, there are good and bad natives. In this book there are good and bad people of all cultures and races represented. That felt realistic to me.
I learned a great deal about how the trapping process, which I am going to assume was researched and presented in an accurate manner. While I am disturbed by the process, I also understand that I am looking at the story through the lens of a different time period more critical of animal treatment.
This book kept my interest by drawing me back in with new conflicts throughout. The plot is clear, but within the plot there are separate story-lines for many of the main characters, each with an arc and a conflict that converge at different times throughout the novel. I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in what life was like before the West was anything but wild and unspoiled. This is not a cowboy story in any way. When I mention the wild west, that is not what I mean. I mean, forest, and barren plains, big rivers, deep snow, wild animals, and wild men.
I read the Kindle version of this book and my only complaint has to do specifically with that version. There were numerous errors and editing problems in the Kindle version of Plews. There were enough present that it was sometimes distracting to the reader. I kept thinking it was such a shame because the writing was quite nice. I know it happens, but I was quite disappointed in this version . Of course I do not fault Mr. Dial for this, however.
November 4, 2016
Three and a half stars. This book was kind of a mixed bag, as the first half was just a three star experience. Too slow in developing the main plot line and characters that were easier to describe than relate. Thankfully however, the second half was a four, with more action and evolving characters about whom one could actually care.
Overall, I'd encourage curious readers who are interested in this genre to read some other titles first, such as High Country by Jason Manning, as this book seemed a bit long and never really captured my fancy.
Overall, I'd encourage curious readers who are interested in this genre to read some other titles first, such as High Country by Jason Manning, as this book seemed a bit long and never really captured my fancy.
April 8, 2023
Sinceramente no me atrajo.
March 4, 2015
When demand for beaver hats decimated the beaver populations in Europe, traders turned to the New World. Here the pelts were called “plews,” from the Canadian French, “pelu,” meaning hairy. In 1825 the Rocky Mountain plew trade was organized south of the Platte River around a business model called the rendezvous scheme. But in 1819, the evident year of, “Plews, ” a novel by Arley L. Dial, the fur trade in America was still dominated by the Upper Missouri trade, as it had been for a hundred years, controlled by companies in the east.
It was a pregnant moment. Business was just recommencing after the War of 1812. Steamboats, navigating the Mississippi since 1811, were turning St. Louis into a major trading city. Missouri was just a few years from statehood. The panic of 1819, instigated by the production of India cotton, which brought on a collapse of cotton prices, which created a liquidity problem at the Second United States Bank, caused money to disappear. Desperate men sought desperate means, and poaching into the Upper Missouri trade looked attractive.
Mister Dial has written a rough and tumble account of an expedition, from St. Louis to the Missouri headwaters, to trap beaver and trade with the Piegan Indians, a southern branch of the Blackfoot nation. His carefully researched yarn unspools in a believable evocation of the era. Readers may be surprised to learn that the Mandan Indians practiced agriculture, including cultivation of corn and vegetables. We glimpse them, and others, just before the plains wars, and white-man diseases, drove them into extinction, or onto reservations. The Mandan were devastated in 1819 by measles and whooping cough.
Mr. Dial takes us into the era through the eyes of his characters, a believable collection of seasoned mountaineers, boatmen, green horns, sadists, cowards, heroes, sea pirates, misfits, traitors, opportunists, and even a free black man, mixed in with various indigenous people rendered surprisingly human rather than as Hollywood cutouts. They forge an intriguing improvisation of struggles, failures and successes.
We see boatmen laboring against the spring floods to get a keelboat upriver. Others of the group march along the banks with a band of horses and mules, hunting and meeting exotic animals. Mr. Dial gives us one of the most convincingly horrible bad men ever to populate the American frontier, and his evil scheme, half business, half personal, haunts the band of trappers to the climax.
The youth of some characters, one boy is only fifteen and some are barely sixteen, is true to the times. At sixteen Abraham Lincoln operated a private ferry service on the Mississippi and at nineteen he took a barge of trading goods down to New Orleans. A contemporary, Lewis H Garrard, went down the Santa Fe Trail at seventeen with some Rocky Mountain traders, and lived to write a book about it.
Mr. Dial is at his absolute best in the wilderness of the Three Forks area as the climax comes amid Indian attacks, treachery, cruelty and triumph. We struggle with the characters through hair-raising battles, winter storms, grizzly encounters, ambushes, numbing calamities and death. One of the survivors, a sixteen year old we meet at the beginning of the book, becomes, by the end, a man with mountains in his veins.
It was a pregnant moment. Business was just recommencing after the War of 1812. Steamboats, navigating the Mississippi since 1811, were turning St. Louis into a major trading city. Missouri was just a few years from statehood. The panic of 1819, instigated by the production of India cotton, which brought on a collapse of cotton prices, which created a liquidity problem at the Second United States Bank, caused money to disappear. Desperate men sought desperate means, and poaching into the Upper Missouri trade looked attractive.
Mister Dial has written a rough and tumble account of an expedition, from St. Louis to the Missouri headwaters, to trap beaver and trade with the Piegan Indians, a southern branch of the Blackfoot nation. His carefully researched yarn unspools in a believable evocation of the era. Readers may be surprised to learn that the Mandan Indians practiced agriculture, including cultivation of corn and vegetables. We glimpse them, and others, just before the plains wars, and white-man diseases, drove them into extinction, or onto reservations. The Mandan were devastated in 1819 by measles and whooping cough.
Mr. Dial takes us into the era through the eyes of his characters, a believable collection of seasoned mountaineers, boatmen, green horns, sadists, cowards, heroes, sea pirates, misfits, traitors, opportunists, and even a free black man, mixed in with various indigenous people rendered surprisingly human rather than as Hollywood cutouts. They forge an intriguing improvisation of struggles, failures and successes.
We see boatmen laboring against the spring floods to get a keelboat upriver. Others of the group march along the banks with a band of horses and mules, hunting and meeting exotic animals. Mr. Dial gives us one of the most convincingly horrible bad men ever to populate the American frontier, and his evil scheme, half business, half personal, haunts the band of trappers to the climax.
The youth of some characters, one boy is only fifteen and some are barely sixteen, is true to the times. At sixteen Abraham Lincoln operated a private ferry service on the Mississippi and at nineteen he took a barge of trading goods down to New Orleans. A contemporary, Lewis H Garrard, went down the Santa Fe Trail at seventeen with some Rocky Mountain traders, and lived to write a book about it.
Mr. Dial is at his absolute best in the wilderness of the Three Forks area as the climax comes amid Indian attacks, treachery, cruelty and triumph. We struggle with the characters through hair-raising battles, winter storms, grizzly encounters, ambushes, numbing calamities and death. One of the survivors, a sixteen year old we meet at the beginning of the book, becomes, by the end, a man with mountains in his veins.
February 18, 2016
The Fur Trade Era, ho for the Rocky Mountains and pelts of beaver and other fur bearing critters. The action in this historical fiction takes place in what will become Montana about twenty years after the Lewis and Clark Expedition was completed.
Hatcher is the booshway of a party of trappers, a blacksmith, voyagers and engages that travel up the Missouri River from St. Louis with trade goods for the Indians for the skins taken by the natives and traps to do some of their own catching of prime plews.
The characters of this book are all stamped differently by the author, one such is the scientist who enjoys the flat-bottomed boat trip up the Big Muddy River searching knowledge and to collect bird specimen of the journey for the museums of the East. His best friend is Almer Johnson who is learning to be a mountain man from some of the saltiest men on the frontier. Two or three of the trappers are very good at what they do and are not afraid to venture near the country of the Blackfoot tribe and who hope to be successful in trading with the Blackfoot, Rees and Mandan Indians.
One of Almers friends is a grizzly pirate he met in St. Louis on the waterfront. It takes a very long time for the party to travel up the Missouri and then before winter arrives they have to get up a small fort that will become their trading post with the Crows.
This book follows a common theme for Fur Trade Era books, but there are many interesting events and surprises for the crew. Several Grizzly Bears are encountered through these pages and the author presents an interesting way for the One shot flintlock rifle packing trappers to survive the curiosity of these top predators of the plains and mountains, if the bear cooperates. There are many buffalo or bison in the story giving exciting hunting stories and food for the party.
But winter is inevitable and with the enemies of the Fur Company and the extreme cold and deep snows of the Rocky Mountains, who and how many of the party can survive to see Spring?
I found the writing well done and a constant source of interest to me. I am a student of the time period and have organized and participated in Fur Era Trade Fairs and Rendevous for education of the public on the history and survival methods used by the pioneers in the Western Wilderness. I did think the trip up the Missouri was a little long and some times kind of windy but overall a great read for myself and those students of the Mountain Men who opened up the West after the Corps of Discovery crossed the continent.
Hatcher is the booshway of a party of trappers, a blacksmith, voyagers and engages that travel up the Missouri River from St. Louis with trade goods for the Indians for the skins taken by the natives and traps to do some of their own catching of prime plews.
The characters of this book are all stamped differently by the author, one such is the scientist who enjoys the flat-bottomed boat trip up the Big Muddy River searching knowledge and to collect bird specimen of the journey for the museums of the East. His best friend is Almer Johnson who is learning to be a mountain man from some of the saltiest men on the frontier. Two or three of the trappers are very good at what they do and are not afraid to venture near the country of the Blackfoot tribe and who hope to be successful in trading with the Blackfoot, Rees and Mandan Indians.
One of Almers friends is a grizzly pirate he met in St. Louis on the waterfront. It takes a very long time for the party to travel up the Missouri and then before winter arrives they have to get up a small fort that will become their trading post with the Crows.
This book follows a common theme for Fur Trade Era books, but there are many interesting events and surprises for the crew. Several Grizzly Bears are encountered through these pages and the author presents an interesting way for the One shot flintlock rifle packing trappers to survive the curiosity of these top predators of the plains and mountains, if the bear cooperates. There are many buffalo or bison in the story giving exciting hunting stories and food for the party.
But winter is inevitable and with the enemies of the Fur Company and the extreme cold and deep snows of the Rocky Mountains, who and how many of the party can survive to see Spring?
I found the writing well done and a constant source of interest to me. I am a student of the time period and have organized and participated in Fur Era Trade Fairs and Rendevous for education of the public on the history and survival methods used by the pioneers in the Western Wilderness. I did think the trip up the Missouri was a little long and some times kind of windy but overall a great read for myself and those students of the Mountain Men who opened up the West after the Corps of Discovery crossed the continent.
April 5, 2016
Great story. The method of writing this historical fiction book makes history come alive. Following the action gives great insight to life back then, and the story line keeps you reading to find out the result. If I read a history book about this lifestyle and time period I probably would not have finished the book, however, this style of writing makes me want to read more about the subject. Great job..
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews