Post by bubbabod on Feb 13, 2006 10:09:34 GMT -6
This thread goes to western novelists as opposed to historians. I discovered Terry C. Johnston's novels in the early to mid 1990's and read most of his Plainsman's series, which followed the adventures of Seamus Donegan, who took part in just about every important Indian battle known to man in the West. No author put in the exhaustive research Terry did, and no one put you in the midst of the fight like Terry did. In reading an interview of him in True West magazine I found out he led tours to all the sites he wrote about, so I signed up immediately and went on Terry's Northern Plains tour. We spent only about two hours at the LBH, but he took us to Ft. Phil Kearny, the Wagon Box, Fetterman's Massacre, Ft. C.F. Smith, the Hayfield fight, Reynolds' fight on the Powder River, Crazy Woman Crossing, the cemetary in Lame Dear, the Dull Knife fight west of Kaycee and the Gatchell Museum. What a great trip.
Terry died in about 2000 after a short fight with colon cancer, and his books are sorely missed. He gained his fame in writing about the mountainmen, a series I have yet to read. During our trip, Terry took the time to personally inscribe all our books we brought along. I have a collection of about 21 paperbacks inscribed by Terry. There were 40 of us on that trip, and he must have signed over 400 books during that week, many while sitting on the rocks and grounds where the fights occurred, and when he ran out of time there, he took them to his hotel room and signed them late in the evening. Not just signed, but personal inscriptions on each one.
Since Terry's death, I have read Fred Chiaventone's A Road We Do Not Know and Moon of Bitter Cold and am looking forward to more by Fred.
Many people I've met through the LBHA or just history buffs seem to not enjoy novels, but prefer only to read Custer's Luck or Lakota Noon, etc., but I love a good western novel sometimes. Terry Johnston told us he didn't consider himself to be a historian, but just a good old-fashioned storyteller. That he was.
On our last day we gathered on the grass under the trees at the cemetary at the LBH. Terry went into an Irish brogue telling the story in the first person of a young Irishman coming to Amerika as a teen-ager and following his life through the Civil War and eventually out west with Custer. Tourists started gathering around listening to his story. It transported us all back to 1876 all the way to the point where a bullet rips into the young man's head at the LBH.
Terry C. Johnston was a great storyteller.
Terry died in about 2000 after a short fight with colon cancer, and his books are sorely missed. He gained his fame in writing about the mountainmen, a series I have yet to read. During our trip, Terry took the time to personally inscribe all our books we brought along. I have a collection of about 21 paperbacks inscribed by Terry. There were 40 of us on that trip, and he must have signed over 400 books during that week, many while sitting on the rocks and grounds where the fights occurred, and when he ran out of time there, he took them to his hotel room and signed them late in the evening. Not just signed, but personal inscriptions on each one.
Since Terry's death, I have read Fred Chiaventone's A Road We Do Not Know and Moon of Bitter Cold and am looking forward to more by Fred.
Many people I've met through the LBHA or just history buffs seem to not enjoy novels, but prefer only to read Custer's Luck or Lakota Noon, etc., but I love a good western novel sometimes. Terry Johnston told us he didn't consider himself to be a historian, but just a good old-fashioned storyteller. That he was.
On our last day we gathered on the grass under the trees at the cemetary at the LBH. Terry went into an Irish brogue telling the story in the first person of a young Irishman coming to Amerika as a teen-ager and following his life through the Civil War and eventually out west with Custer. Tourists started gathering around listening to his story. It transported us all back to 1876 all the way to the point where a bullet rips into the young man's head at the LBH.
Terry C. Johnston was a great storyteller.
