Beauty for Ashes

Trapping beaver was the major source of income for mountain men in the Rocky Mountain West of the 1820s - the luxuriant, sought-after pelts could make a man rich. But it was a dangerous way to make a living winter blizzards, hostile Indians, sickness, and starvation lurked at every point of the compass. Only a special brand of man could survive it all.

After making a harrowing 700-mile journey alone and on foot from the Sweetwater River in Wyoming to Fort Atkinson on the Missouri River and finding a home in the fur trade, young Sam Morgan is becoming just such a man. Followed closely by Coy, his faithful coyote pup, and trapping with a brigade of mountain men, Sam seeks more than furs and wealth. He is searching for the love of his life, the Crow Indian woman Meadowlark, and with his companions - the French-Canadian Gideon Dubois, the mulatto Jim Beckwourth, and the Pawnee Third Wing - he heads for the Wind River country and the village of Meadowlark's people.

Sam is put to every test in his journey to the Crow village fights with Pawnee, Lakota and Blackfeet; captivity and escape from a Sioux camp, buffalo hunts, and the distrust of Meadowlark's family and tribe. He endures the sweat lodge and Sun Dance ceremonies that test his beliefs and self-confidence, and concocts a last-ditch, daring, and foolhardy scheme to win Meadowlark's hand. For all its page-turning action, Beauty for Ashes is the unforgettable story of a boy who becomes a man by necessity in the cruel, beautiful, unexplored wilderness of the Old West.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

addition to the Rendezvous novels (So Wild a Dream and Beauty for Ashes), Win Blevins, an authority on the Plains Indians and fur-trade era of the West, is author of Give Your Heart to the Hawks, Stone Song, his prize-winning novel of Crazy Horse, plus Charbonneau, Rock Child, RavenShadow and others. He lives in Utah with his wife Meredith, also a novelist.