Give Your Heart to the Hawks: A Tribute to the Mountain Men - Hardcover

Blevins, Winfred

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0840213026 ISBN 13: 9780840213020

Publisher: Nash Publishing, 1973

Synopsis

For over thirty years, from the time of Lewis and Clark into the 1840s, the mountain men explored the Great American West. As trappers in a hostile, trackless land, their exploits opened the gates of the mountains for the wagon trains of pioneers who followed them. In Give Your Heart to the Hawks, Win Blevins presents a poetic tribute to these dauntless "first Westerners" and their incredible adventures. Here, among many, are the stories of:* John Colter, who, in 1808, naked and without weapons or food, escaped captivity by the Blackfeet and ran and walked 250 miles to Fort Lisa at the mouth of the Yellowstone River;* Hugh Glass, who was mauled by a grizzly in 1823, left for dead by his trapper companions, and crawled 300 miles to Fort Kiowa on the Missouri; * Kit Carson, who ran away from home at age 17, became a legendary mountain man in his 20s and served as scout and guide for John C. Fremont's westward explorations of the 1840s;* Jedediah Smith, a tall, gaunt, Bible-reading New Yorker whose trapping expeditions ranged from the Rockies to California and who was killed by Comanches on the Cimarron in 1831.

About this title

About the Author:

“I came naturally by my yen to wander far places, physical, imaginary, and spiritual...”-Win Blevins Win Blevins, of Cherokee, Irish and Welsh descent, is from a family that was on the move, always west. Win's childhood was spent roaming, his dad a railroad man. Win went to school in St. Louis, and the family spent summers in little towns along the tracks of the railroads. He listened to the whistles blow at night and wanted to go wherever the trains went.
Seldom has a young man been in more of a hurry. Using scholarships, Win ran through a succession of colleges, receiving his master's degree, with honors, in English from Columbia University. He taught at Purdue University and Franklin College, then received a fellowship to attend USC. Win became a newspaperman - a music, theater, and film critic for both major Los Angeles papers. In 1972 he took the big leap-he quit his job to write out his passions-exploring and learning wild places-full time. His greatest passion of all has been to set the stories of these places, their people and animals, colors and smells, into books.
Win climbed mountains for ten years. A fluke blizzard caught him on a mountaintop and froze his feet, an end to climbing mountains, but not to exploring them. He's rafted rivers in the west, particularly the Snake and the San Juan, and was briefly a river guide. His love of the great Yellowstone River gave him a fine appreciation for the people who first loved these wild places. Along the way, Win lost the use of his legs and learned to sail, deciding a boat was a good place for a man without legs. He regained the use of his legs, and maintains his love of the open seas.
His first book, Give Your Heart to the Hawks, is still in print after thirty years. Other works include Stone Song, a novel about Crazy Horse, for which he won the 1996 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award and the 1996 Spur Award. He's written 15 books, including a Dictionary of the American West, numerous screenplays and magazine articles.
He lives quietly in the canyon country of Utah. His passions grow with time-his wife Meredith, the center of his life, their five kids and grandkids. Classical music, baseball, roaming red rock mesas in the astonishing countryside, playing music... He considers himself blessed to be one of the people creating new stories about the west, and is proud to call himself a member of the world's oldest profession-storyteller.

Review:

"It was an epic time, which lasted hardly more than a third of a century before civilization swarmed west on trails the mountain men had blazed. Now Blevins sees they are paid the awed honor that is due them, in a book which has the drama and suspense of a novel." ―Los Angeles Times

"Win Blevins has long since won his place among the West's very best." ―Tony Hillerman

"For the lover of the early West, it is good entertainment...with lots of color, suspense and excitement." ―The Denver Post

About this edition

• Publisher: Nash Publishing
• Publication date: 1973
• ISBN 10: 0840213026
• ISBN 13: 9780840213020
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 349