Into the uncharted West came the mountain men. They were French Canadians, Blacks, and Whites who left society and conventions behind. They all wanted to see a vast, unknown landscape. An earth that roiled and bubbled and erupted even when the skies were snow-filled. Powerful rivers that sculpted the land. An ocean that was wild with promise and mystery. The most complicated, and enigmatic, of these mountain men is Jedediah Smith. Smith is driven by a passion: He wants to walk every step of the unexplored American West. He wants to lead the way, to go where no white man has gone before. Smith wants to map all of it and publish his maps so others can see what awaits them. He wants to walk in a world where religion and family doesn't tie him down, but he reads the Bible every day and writes home often. His heart is filled with the call of the wild. In this biography Win Blevins gives Jedediah's adventures the drama and passion of a novel. He uses Jedediah's own point of view to tell the story from his first venture into the west, to his discovery of the pass over the Rocky Mountains, to his crossing great deserts to reach California, to his journey to Oregon and back to the Rockies. In the end Blevins takes the reader, breathless, to Smith's last moments. A great reading adventure! REVIEWS "It was an epic time, which lasted hardly more than a third of a century before civilization swarmed west on trails the mountain men had blazed. Now Blevins sees they are paid the awed honor that is due them, in a book which has the drama and suspense of a novel." ―Los Angeles Times "No one since the great A. B. Guthrie, Jr., has a better feel for the world of the mountain man." ―Don Coldsmith "For the lover of the early West, it is good entertainment... with lots of color, suspense and excitement." ―The Denver Post "Win Blevins is an American author of fiction and non-fiction. He has written many books about the western mountain trappers, and is known for his "mastery of western lore." -- Publisher's Weekly "Not since Frederick Manfred's 'Lord Grizzly' and Vardis Fisher's 'Mountain Man' has there been so gripping, authentic, and captivating a story of the men who matched the mountains of the Great American West. Win Blevins has long since won his place among the West's very best."- Tony Hillerman .