Rendezvous and Dark Passage: Two Complete Barnaby Skye Novels (Skye's West) - Softcover

Wheeler, Richard S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 076538065X ISBN 13: 9780765380654

Publisher: Forge Books, 2015

Synopsis

Two complete novels by Richard Wheeler in one low-priced edition

Rendezvous
Barnaby Skye, a seaman in the Royal Navy, jumps ship at Fort Vancouver in 1826 with little more than the clothes on his back. Fighting for life, he heads inland toward an unknown fate. Skye falls in with legendary mountain men, and finds another unexpected turn in his life when he meets the Crow maiden, Many Quill Woman, who will become his wife.

Dark Passage
In 1831 Skye accompanies his wife to her village, where she falls in with Jim Beckwourth and accompanies him on a raid among the Blackfeet. When she's abducted by the Bloods, the deadliest band of Blackfeet, Skye trails her into Canada, where he's still wanted for deserting his ship four years ago. Then Sky himself is taken prisoner, and Victoria must escape her captors to free the man she loves.

This edition of the book is the deluxe, tall rack mass market paperback.

About this title

About the Author

Richard S. Wheeler has written over fifty novels and several short stories, including Rendezvous and Dark Passage. He has won four Spur Awards and the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in the field of western literature.

He lives in the literary and film community of Livingston, Montana, and is married to Professor Sue Hart, of Montana State University-Billings. Before turning to fiction he was a newsman and book editor. He has raised horses and been a wrangler at an Arizona dude ranch.

Wheeler is the author of The Witness series, the Skye's West series, and many other novels.

From Kirkus Reviews

After eight fine westerns detailing the exploits of Barnaby Skye as a mountain man during the 1850s and '60s, old pro Wheeler (Sierra, 1996, etc.) fills in the blanks in his colorful protagonist's background--beginning in 1826, when the frontiersman- to-be arrived in North America, through his backwoods apprenticeship in the Rockies. Shanghaied by a press gang off the streets of London at age 14, Skye spends 7 years aboard a Royal Navy frigate before he's able to jump ship at Fort Vancouver. Evading both the British sailors and Hudson's Bay Co. minions directed to bring him back alive, the seaman makes his way to the Columbia River basin. Once slated to attend Cambridge like his merchant father, young Skye hopes to reach Boston, enter Harvard, and secure the education that will ensure him his birthright. Along his wayward way, however, he falls in with friendly Shoshone Indians who conduct him to a so- called Rendezvous, an annual trappers' fair in the Cache Valley, safely outside Canadian jurisdiction. While at this hinterland jamboree, Skye wins the respect of such high-country legends as Jim Bridger and Jebediah Smith; he also encounters Many Quill Woman, the Crow lass who will soon become his wife. Still bent on reaching the New World's Cambridge, Skye then sets out on his own for St. Louis. Soon relieved of his horses and kit by marauding Blackfeet, he has little time to link up with a crew of freelance nimrods before hard snows hit the mountains. After further adventures, he joins forces with his new associates in the Yellowstone area, helps make the beaver trapping season a financial success, and winters with the Crows. Eventually finding the call of the wild a whole lot stronger than the lure of the classroom, Sky marries his dusky maiden and, come spring, sets out with his westering comrades on another hunt. A promising start in what appears to be an absorbing, authoritative series. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Forge Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 076538065X
• ISBN 13: 9780765380654
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 688