When the enigmatic Jedediah Smith, greatest of the mountain men, puts together a brigade of trappers for an expedition into the unknown territory of Mexican California, Sam Morgan joyfully joins up. With his Crow Indian wife Meadowlark and his coyote pup at his side, Sam sees the expedition as a chance for adventure -- and wealth.

“James Clyman was one of untamed and wild America’s most joyful explorers.” ~ Win Blevins A member of Jedediah Smith's first mountain man brigade, Clyman was there when the South Pass was discovered, opening the inter-mountain West to fur trappers. Crossing the country during the great migration of 1846, Clyman encountered the Donner party and gave them sound advice, which they tragically ignored. A few other adventures: He sewed Jim Bridger's ear back on after a grizzly bear attack; explored the Green Valley and the Salt Lake Basin; alone and weary, he walked 600 miles to Fort Atkinson. (Still one of the West's most remarkable tales of survival.) He also kept Bill Sublette from freezing to death en route. Clyman crossed twice to the Pacific and ended up settling in the Napa Valley, raising his family, writing down his adventures, and spreading the legendary stories of the mountain men In his own heartfelt and exciting way, James Clyman gives us his experiences in the heyday of the American fur trade, and during the peak of exploration and immigration to Oregon and California. Clyman was a keen and meticulous observer, and his epic adventures are the stuff of legends. A must-read for everyone who loves the West. **

Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "an adventurer's story told as never before," this is the saga of a man compelled by the dark, delicious grasp of a river to carve out a home in America's most awe-inspiring backcountry Native Americans, the first few white people who dared to explore the West, and the settlers who followed all braved a glorious and treacherous wilderness to stake their lives on the bounty of the great rivers charging out of the Rocky Mountains. One such man is Mac "the Dancer" Maclean, who finds his destiny high in the headwaters of the Yellowstone, the swift river that rumbles through two majestic waterfalls and charges across the vast plains of Montana. Maclean goes west with just a small band of friends and fellow explorers. Venturing deep into uncharted territory, they hunt, trade, and battle, eventually becoming husbands and fathers to Indian women and children. As Mac creates a life fully his own, he has no...

Filled with drama and humor, the lore of American Indians and Tibetan Buddhists, and unforgettable characters, Of Love and Demons is a deeply moving human story.

Into a West too unmapped for the explorers, too bad for the bad men, 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 they rose into the stuff of legends.