Wordcraft Native Circle's winner, and winner of the Spur award. 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. Young Sam Morgan has itchy feet and a hungry spirit. In 1822, life in Pennsylvania feels too hemmed in. He nurtures a wild dream of a woodsman’s life, a truly free American life. But where? Perhaps the far West. Since Captains Lewis and Clark came back, people are telling stories about the Shining Mountains. He sets off.

Young Sam Morgan, serving his apprenticeship as a mountain man in the Rocky Mountains in the early 1820s, searches for Meadowlark, the Crow Indian girl he loves. At the Wind River village of Meadowlark's people, Sam finds her being courted by a Crow warrior named Red Roan. Sam realizes he must become more Indian than white man to win Meadowlark. Taken prisoner by the dreaded Sioux, the Crows' mortal enemy, Sam escapes but loses everything except his faithful companion, a coyote pup. Sam must rebuild his life and his esteem among his Crow friends Beauty for Ashes is an unforgettable love story and an action-filled adventure. There are fights against Pawnees, Sioux, and Blackfeet; a knife duel and horse race at the trappers' rendezvous; and a harrowing escape from captivity, torture and certain death by the Indian captors. This is the memorable story of a boy becoming a man in the cruel, beautiful, unexplored wilderness of the Old West.

Young Sam Morgan, the Pennsylvania runaway and now a seasoned Rocky Mountain trapper, joins a brigade led by Jedediah Smith, greatest mountain man of them all, heading west for the Mexican province of Alta California. With Sam on this dangerous mission into unexplored territory are his beloved Crow wife Meadowlark and a polyglot host of multi-national fur hunters, Ute and Shoshone Indians. The journey south to the Colorado River and across the Mojave Desert is game rare or nonexistent, water a rarity, strange bands of naked Indians, the hammering sun, all in a godforsaken land of sand and scrub. Sam Morgan's life changed unalterably when the pregnant Meadowlark falls ill as the brigade makes its way through Mojave country. In an emergency push west he is able to bring her safely into the California coastal town of Monterey but there faces the greatest crisis of his life - the death of the only woman he has ever loved.

On a mission to save his daughter’s life, a courageous adventurer contends with raging rivers, hostile enemies, and harrowing memories in this gripping historical novel based on the lives of America’s mountain men Five years after leaving Pennsylvania to seek his fortune in the West, Sam Morgan has experienced the epic highs and grim lows of a frontiersman’s life. When he and his Crow Indian wife were expelled from Mexican California along with the rest of Jedediah Smith’s brigade of fur trappers, Sam rushed the pregnant and ailing Meadowlark to the mission at Monterey—only to watch helplessly as his worst nightmare became reality. Forced to leave his infant daughter, Esperanza, behind, Sam heads once again into the vast and treacherous wilderness between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. In Santa Fe, he finds comfort in the arms of the beautiful widow Doña Paloma and makes enough money to rescue his daughter. But when Sam returns to California, he learns that Esperanza has been kidnapped. Rescuing her will be the mountain man’s most dangerous and challenging adventure yet.

A decade has passed since Sam Morgan of Pennsylvania ran away from disappointments at home and joined the rough-and-tumble life of a mountain man in the Far West. In those ten years, Sam has made his mark as a trapper, fighter, and survivor. He has also made friends with such historical notables as Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, and Tom “Broken Hand” Fitzpatrick. Sam has also endured tragedy: An explorative venture into California, five years past, ended when his Crow Indian wife, Meadowlark, died in childbirth. And now his lover, the widow Paloma Luna, owner of a wealthy rancho in Taos, is dying of cancer and setting out for Mexico City to pray at the shrine of the Virgin de Guadalupe. Distraught, Sam finds a mission for himself when he determines to find and rescue two Mexican girls, Lupe and Rosalita, who have been kidnapped from their village by Navajo raiders and spirited off into the New Mexico wilderness. The search for the captive girls takes him deep into Navajo, Ute, and Blackfeet Indian territory, to Bent's Fort in Colorado, near death at the hands of a companion, and finally to a surprise at the end of the trail involving the missing girls and a trapper called Pegleg Smith. Publishers Weekly Blevins' novel begins in 1828 as Sam and his trapper friends are whooping it up at a Mexican double wedding in Santa Fe. Shortly after the ceremony, the two brides are kidnapped by Navajo raiders, which enrages Sam because the women are his adopted daughters. Accompanied by his hotheaded adopted son, Tomás, and trapper Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, Sam sets out in pursuit, though his heart is heavy because his lover, Paloma Luna de Otero, is dying of breast cancer. The rescue mission is hampered, threatened and deceived by a corrupt Mexican governor, manipulative Indian chiefs, devious white men and murderous raiders. By the time Sam catches up with the two captive girls, he is faced with a surprise that confounds him and leads to murder. Blevins is a master of mountain man lore, and he certainly knows the beaver and buffalo hide business, as well as the politics of the region and era. Loaded with action, drama, vivid descriptions and colorful historical characters, this is a whopper of a western yarn. "The glory years of frontier life, fresh and rich." —Kirkus Reviews "Win Blevins has long since won his place among the West's very best." —Tony Hillerman "Blevins possesses a rare skill in masterfully telling a story-to-paper. He is a true storyteller in the tradition of Native people." — Lee Francis, Associate Professor of Native American Studies, University of New Mexico "One of the finest novels to come out of the American West in a long time...an amazing book, grandly conceived, beautifully written." — Dallas Morning News on Stone Song “No one writes about the westering experience better than Win Blevins. He has a poet’s way with words, and imagery to match the wilderness reality. In So Wild a Dream Blevins has re-created that long-ago world where the imporbable was commonplace, and where courage and audacity made anything possible.” — Lucia St. Clair Robson, author of Ghost Warrior.

"Win Blevins has long since won his place among the West's very best."— Tony Hillerman. NY Times Bestselling author, Win Blevins, brings us this latest extraordinary historical adventure. Mountain men explored the wide-eyed wilderness, crossed the Rockies, learned the ways of Native Americans, married Indian women and had families, trekked to the Pacific, and became the stuff of legends. To survive, they understood that they were part of the natural world and its rhythms. But that fresh world was changing, and it was time to find a place where mountain men, and their mixed-race families, could call home. “Fans of the Rendezvous Series, it need hardly be said, will enjoy DREAMS BENEATH YOUR FEET! Through clever storytelling, and the seamless insertion of important background information, Blevins has made sure that readers unfamiliar with the series can follow each story, easily.”— Booklist ……. Eighteen years have passed since Sam Morgan came West from Pennsylvania and learned the perilous business of trapping in the Rocky Mountain wilderness. Now, in 1840, that world has gone. Sam Morgan decides to return to California, with his daughter Esperanza, to start a new life. The golden land holds a harsh memory, but friends convince him that his destiny, and that of his mixed-race family, lies on the Pacific shore. Meadowlark's uncle, Flat Dog, his family, and Hannibal MacKye, the half-Delaware Indian mountain man, join Sam and Esperanza for the journey west—they hope to trade for a herd of their Appaloosa horses to sell at a profit in California. On the Oregon Trail, Morgan encounters a terrified woman, Lei Palua, who has escaped the clutches of a lunatic called Kanaka Boy, whose ruthless gang has been terrifying Indian villages in the Northwest. Sam Morgan and his people take Lei Palua under their wing, unaware that her one-time lover, and now bloodthirsty nemesis, dogs her trail, vowing to kill her and all who stand in his way. When they dispense of Kanaka Boy, and their journey starts fresh, Sam comes to believe that his destiny truly is on the shores of the wild Pacific. Will his dreams of a family home, and acceptance for all, be fulfilled? Come along for the ride! "Blevins, a masterful storyteller, really piles on the action which is fast-paced and filled with the details of frontier life, the fur trade, and authentic Indian lore and beliefs.” – Publisher’s Weekly Readers who enjoyed ‘Lonesome Dove’ (Larry McMurtry) and ‘Stone Song’ (Win Blevins) will like DREAMS BENEATH YOUR FEET.