So Wild a Dream

Rendezvous #1

by Win Blevins

Into a West too unmapped for the explorers, too bad for the badmen, too wild for any white men, came the mountain men. They blazed the trails across the Rocky Mountains, opened the vast country between the Missouri frontier and the Pacific, and rose into legend.

Sam Morgan has itchy feet and a hungry spirit. In 1822 life near Pittsburgh is far too hemmed in. He cares nothing for commerce or industry. He nurtures a wild dream of a woodsman's life, a truly free American life.

But where? Down the Ohio River? Up the Mississippi? Perhaps the far West. Since Captains Lewis and Clark came back, people are telling stories about the Shining Mountains.

Along the way Sam finds companions and adventures. For guidance, a half-breed Delaware Indian and Captain William Clark himself. For friends, a con man, a madam, and an assortment of shaggy men who have tasted the waters of those mountains.

Sam first learns the fur trade from Bible-toting Jedediah Smith and Irish Tom Fitzpatrick, both already becoming legends. He also learns from the Indians. At the Ree villages, he comes face to face with treachery and instant death; among the Crows, he learns love of a woman; from the Bois Brules, Snakes, Pawnees, and other tribes, he learns native crafts, lore, and mysticism.

But his great teacher is hard-won experience. He makes a grueling seven-hundred-mile trek, alone and on foot, across the Great Plains to Fort Atkinson on the Missouri. On the way he survives a holocaust of a prairie fire and learns the price of survival in the pitiless Western wilds, and something of who he is and wants to become.

Not since Frederick Manfred's Lord Grizzly and Vardis Fisher's Mountain
Man has there been so gripping, authentic, and captivating a story of the men
who matched the mountains of the Great American West.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Westerns, Historical

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Winfred Blevins

Reviews

[Gary Wallis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book about the mountain men first going into the wild. More books follow this one. First in a series.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book Rated 4.0 of 5

Win Blevins is an author whom I had not heard of before reading this, though that's likely because my exposure to western fiction has been severely limited.

In So Wild a Dream, young man Sam Morgan begins an epic journey. Stealing away on a flatboat he occasions into a series of characters familiar from our history books (such as William Clark and Jedediah Smith) and encounters a number of different Indian tribes where he falls in love, learns the native ways of doing simple tasks, and faces a cruel death. His response to the latter is to flee and with only a coyote pup as a companion, travels 700 miles on foot to return to the relative safety of a white man's fort. But the journey of Sam Morgan doesn't end there ... it is only just beginning.

This book is not unlike Homer's Odyssey, with Sam Morgan as our western Odysseus on an epic return home and running in to all sorts of characters, educational situations, and threats on his life.

Morgan's encounters with historical figures were less interesting to me than the time he spent with the Indians (I'll use the politically incorrect term here as it's the historical term for the Native Americans). The meeting of Clark and Smith (and others) sometimes felt as though it were included for its cleverness and to help establish the time frame for Morgan, neither of which was necessary. It wasn't distracting as much as it was just not important to me.

On the other hand, Morgan's interactions with the various Indian tribes was really eye-opening (from a historical point of view). This really hit home how the different tribes worked and lived so differently from one another. We (or at least I) tend to lump them together in their behavior and societal structure.

The ending of the book surprised me. This was not where I anticipated or expected Morgan to go, though it makes sense and is certainly in keeping with his character. (I'm clearly trying not to give anything away.)

The book is the first in a series and I will really look forward to reading more of this tremendous adventure.

Looking for a good book? So Wild a Dream is an epic western adventure by Win Blevins in the tradition of Homer, and brings with it some great American history.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty good yarn about mountain men opening up the US West, which seems to be based on sound research. The characters and the stories are mildly interesting although the approach seems somewhat formulaic: our hero has a plan then something goes wrong, our hero reacts to the challenge and gets out of the fix he is in by the skin of his teeth. He then builds a new plan and we repeat the cycle. it was a pleasant way to pass the time, but not exactly compelling. This is the first of three books in a set and I will read them all. I have also read several William Johnson books about the same era, and I find those more exciting.

[Carolyn J Niethammer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deeply American tale

In nearly cinematic detail Blevens takes us along as a young man, just a teenager, heads west from Pennsylvania, encounters an astounding range of characters and begins to find himself. More of a man’s book, but it had me hooked from the start. Enough real history to make me feel like I had learned something as well as been entertained. Lots of gorgeous prose as well.

[Mikel Rhodes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great story based on facts.

This book is a top of the line historical fiction about the men who opened the west. The book is very well documented with real men and fictional men. The author is meticulous in maintaining historical integrity in all his characters. I highly recommend the reading of this book.

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this first book in Blevins’ Rendezvous series we meet a young man Sam Morgan, who heeds the call to go west and embarks on a series of adventures in the untamed land of America’s untamed west. There he meets a large cast of characters, some real, some imagined, and has all the adventures any young man could wish for. All the tropes of the western are here – and that’s really the problem. They’re ALL here, and it all felt too familiar. Meticulous historical research somewhat redeemed the book for me, but overall there were just too many clichés and stereotypes and too many stock characters to lose myself in the narrative.

[Steve Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this very interesting. I definitely plan on reading the next book in the series, Beauty for Ashes. Mixing in historical data with the fictional characters gave the story an interesting twist. I thought the main characters were very interesting and wonderfully fleshed out.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought it to be a great little adventure book with some interesting historical tidbits. I was happy to learn that a lot of the supporting characters were actual people and that their stories were pulled from their own accounts.

[Ronald Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read

I like a historical fiction now and then. This is a good one. Time to read something different now. Thanks

[Deedee]

FAY-FA

[Diane Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apparently, I read this twice. Once on 2-22-15 and now on 1-9-19. I think I gave it three stars before because of the description of the dying animals and such. The story is about living in the wilderness, of course, and people did have to eat back then.

I got through the book this time, and it was quite humorous in places, colorfully told, and held my attention throughout. The author tried to use a full cast of characters that represented society back then: Indians, whites, French trappers, river men, con men, prostitutes, etc. What I liked about this was how the characters broke stereotypical tradition. One of the Indians, for example, had been highly educated, could speak four languages, and even worked in a circus for a while. It left the main character very confused about who he should trust or not when he ran into the different tribes. The descriptions of the land and waters were very good. It had a lot of action in it. And, I found it an entertaining book - obviously, more so than the first time around.

[Patrick Cauldwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little cliche, maybe, but very entertaining. Follows all the classic tropes of Western literature. The author obviously knows his history, though, and has read all the classic mountain man journals. I'll definitely move on to the next book in the series.

[Bob Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's still an old romantic left in my soul and having spent some time in Montana this book touched a nerve.
It's Schoolboys Own Annual all over again. Loved it !
To see today the Crow Reservation just breaks your heart ! Those once proud horseman so cruelly reduced.
We never learn.

[Polly Krize · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Historically accurate, Blevins writes as if he was actually with the mountain men on the Upper Missouri River. Choosing to go off into the wild country, young Sam Morgan is tested on the rivers of the American West.

[Jade Lauron · Rating 3 out of 5]

First read 9/2/13 - 9/5/13
Second read 3/11/15 - 3/12/15

[Ronda Wian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great !

Never missing reads of the mountains man era this book ranks as with them. An epic journey to the fur trade. And it's struggles

[Patricia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not my kind of book....sex in the first chapter.....

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winner, 2004 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West