Overview
Upper Missouri River, 1825
Against the wild grandeur of the Rocky mountains and a richly woven tapestry of Indian cultures--Sioux, Mandan, Crow, Shoshoni--Coyote Summer unfolds into an unforgettable tale of love and reconciliation, destiny, and the indomitable spirit.
No two people could be more different: Heals Like A Willow, a beautiful young Shoshoni medicine woman, and Richard Hamilton, a Harvard philosophy student new to the frontier. Though they come from worlds apart, hindered by vastly different cultures, their souls have met and will not be denied.
But Willow has ties to the Spirit world and a responsibility to her people. In visions she has seen the coming White Storm brewing in the East--the endless stream of settlers overrunning the land, pouring ever westward. She must leave the trading posts, the river, and the company of white men. Even if it means leaving behind the one who has taken her heart.
Armed only with his philosophy, meaningless in the harsh reality of the Rockies, Richard sets out after her. Facing the endless expanse of mountains and snow, a new understanding dawns on Richard--that his desperate search for love and illumination may bear the ultimate price.
Synopsis
Upper Missouri River, 1825
Against the wild grandeur of the Rocky Mountains and a richly woven tapestry of Indian cultures - Sioux, Mandan, Crow, Shoshoni - Coyote Summer unfolds into an unforgettable tale of love and reconciliation, destiny, and the indomitable human spirit.
No two people could be more different: Heals Like A Willow, a beautiful young Shoshoni medicine woman, and Richard Hamilton, a Harvard philosophy student new to the frontier. Though they come from worlds apart, hindered by vastly different cultures, their souls have met and will not be denied.
But Willow has ties to the Spirit World and a reponsibility to her people. In visions she has seen the coming White Storm brewing in the East - the endless stream of settlers overrunning the land, pouring ever westward. She must leave the trading posts, the river, and the company of white men. Even if it means leaving behind the one who has taken her heart.
Armed only with his philosophy, meaningless in the harsh reality of the Rockies, Richard sets out after her. Facing the endles expanse of mountains and snow, a new understanding dawns on Richard - that his desperate search for love and illumination may bear the ultimate price.
Tulsa World
A tremendous novel which takes the reader back to vanished America - a time when the last great Indian nations lived in unfettered freedom. Gear delivers a compelling story of cultural clashes and forbidden love...in high voltage prose complete with finely etched characters.
Editorials
From the Publisher
"A tremendous novel which takes the reader back to vanished America--a time when the last great Indian nations lived in unfettered freedom. Gear delivers a compelling story of cultural clashes and forbidden love....in high voltage prose complete with finely etched characters."--Tulsa World
"The sequel to The Morning River and a dandy book on its own merits. In fact, Coyote Summer may be the better story of the two. Certainly, it doesn't lack for excitement....Gear succeeds in creating something more than a mere historical novel."--Roundup magazine
Tulsa World
A tremendous novel which takes the reader back to vanished America - a time when the last great Indian nations lived in unfettered freedom. Gear delivers a compelling story of cultural clashes and forbidden love...in high voltage prose complete with finely etched characters.Roundup Magazine
The sequel to The Morning River and a dandy book on its own merits. In fact, Coyote Summer may be the better story of the two. Certainly, it doesn't lack for excitement...Gear succeeds in creating something more than a mere historical novel.Kirkus Reviews
Gear (People of the Lightning, 1995, etc.) picks up the adventures of Boston Brahman Richard Hamilton, begun in The Morning River (1996), carrying him from untested student of philosophy and priggish young gentleman of society to maturation and manhood on the virgin frontier of the American West in the 1820s.The story resumes with Richard indentured to rough mountain man Travis Hartman and obliged to work on a keelboat bound for the Yellowstone, where the boat's owner, Dave Green, hopes to establish an illegal trading post. Travis is committed to making a man of the boyish Richard, who has already proved his mettle by killing a Pawnee warrior and rescuing the beautiful Heals Like a Willow, a Shoshone mystic who's smitten by the handsome but elitist Bostonian. For the slow first half of this sequel, Richard broods over the loss of his honor owing to happenstances revealed in The Morning River (they included robbery and murder)—matters that, like the frontier around him, are at odds with his sophomoric philosophical understanding of civilization's established values. Finally, though, the plot begins to move forward with a speed that makes the ponderous first 200 pages worth the journey. Richard is bloodied and badly wounded in a pitched battle, and he finds his devotion to the memory of his Boston love, Laura Templeton, competing with his newfound affection for the Shoshone girl. Ultimately, though, Richard is saved by true love—both in Boston and in the West—and reconciles his philosophical studies with frontier and human actualities. The stage is well set for volume three.
All the sterotypical Indians talk like Oxford dons, and all the rustic whites speak in dialectical frontier gibberish; but, still, Gear presents the early American West with a rare, salty accuracy of detail. The action scenes are exciting, the romance ones only marginally sentimental.