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AND THERE WERE MEN by Russell Miankeship Kirkus Star

AND THERE WERE MEN

By

Pub Date: Aug. 17th, 1942
Publisher: Knopf

The Northwest, bluff, indigenous and absorbing material, which fits into the same market as such series an American Folkways, Rivers of America, etc. Not confined to Pacific area, but covers Idaho and Montana, tapping their folklore. Tales, tall but true, of some of its early characters. A rough, diversified country, which was never ""all singing and roses"", but which gave men a chance denied them elsewhere, fostering individualism and initiative at any cost. Here they are, red men like Smohalla, the primitive mystic, and Joseph, the great war leader; men of God like Davies, ""the Walla Walla Jesus"", and Keil, who instigated a Utopia of Christian Communism at Aurora; bad men, like Bill Potter, the squaw man who was handy with a gun; like Ferd Patterson, lady killer, and Boone Helm, desperado. The book closes with two profiles of early mining towns, Idaho City, which lives on, and Silver City, where hope is dead. Lively, humorous, dramatic.