A while back, I mentioned that I would sooner or later put a post about my all time favorite author, and literary hero. Well I think that this is as good a time as any to offer up a little info on Louis Dearborn L'Amour.

Louis L'Amour, in case you didn't know was a western writer. Actually I take that back, he was a western man that wrote. This guy was the real McCoy. He lived the life of adventure. He was a cattle skinner, a hay baler, a professional boxer, and a merchant marine. He was also a guard at an old mine. He had a number of jobs in his youth. He was bored with school and left at the ripe ol' age of 15.

All of these jobs served him well as he learned a great deal about the life of the men from the old west. He received first hand knowledge of many of the great gunfighters and various characters associated with America's early western era.

If you follow his writing, you will know that his most involved series involved the Sackett family. The Sacketts were a rather large family strung throughout the hills of Tennessee and parts beyond. Their story was told from it's Welsh beginnings and brought forward all the way into the late 1800's. This was a family that stuck together no matter what. They had only to call for help and sooner or later another Sackett would be nearby to lend a hand.

My early teen years were spent living in the old west through Louis L'Amour. I got the opportunity to be on cattle drives, and to be a town Marshall. I was hunting gold through New Mexico and fighting loggers in a frontier town. All of this was compliments of Mr. L'Amour. While he was criticized often for his writing style, you need only read one of his books to understand that he was a storyteller. Plain and simple this man had a gift. He could put you in the middle of his story and there you stayed till he was good and ready to let you out.

Not to jump off the subject too much, but that is what attracted me to Tina at The Clean White Page. She has that same rare ability to put you into her story until she is ready to release you from her grasp. There is a lot of Louis L'Amour sneaking out of Tina. She just doesn't write westerns...YET!!

Louis L'Amour won a ton of awards for his genius. He won the Congressional Gold Medal, The Medal of Freedom, and he was also presented with an honorary PhD from Jamestown College in North Dakota.

Sadly he lost his battle with lung cancer in 1988. It's sort of weird how people can remember where they were when Elvis Presley died (for those of you alive when he was). Well I can remember vividly being in my living room, and in fact reading a L'Amour book, when the news mentioned the death of the most prolific western author of all times. That alone should speak volumes to this man. He surpassed even the likes of Zane Grey. Little side note for you... He was also responsible for 4 Hopalong Cassidy books. He denied it till the day he died, but after his death his son admitted to the fact that Hoppy did indeed get written (in part) by L'Amour.

So while I could never do the man justice by describing the little bit I managed here, I will leave you with this. If you haven't ever read Louis L'Amour give it a try. If you aren't a western fan, try one of his detective stories. Or maybe you could try some of his poetry. Yeah that's right this guy did it all. Including 2 works of non-fiction. If you really want to get a sense of the man then read his biography "Education of a Wandering Man". It's a truly unique look into the life of an incredibly gifted, creative storyteller.