Colin Stuart (1) (1910–)

Shoot an arrow to stop the wind by Colin Stuart is a “coming-of-age” story about a young boy who spends the summer of 1926, his 16th year, working for his uncle at the family’s ranch in northern Montana. He spends time with his uncles and many friends, including a girl whom he tormented in grade school. And he meets new friends as well including Julie, a full-blooded Cree. It’s also the story of his great-grandmother, Aunt Nora-Lassie and her wisdom. It’s about loss of innocence show more but the gain of greater understanding of where he fits into the world. Although this was listed as a novel; with its realism and pace, it really reads like a memoir of a life that was fast disappearing. It was a favorite book of mine and was re-read many times when I was younger.

Fast forward to several years ago when I entered my books on LibraryThing. Being a librarian, I had to be sure that everything was correct. Colin Stuart was on an author’s page which covered more than one person so I needed to do some research so I could split the page. To my surprise, I found that Colin Stuart was the pseudonym for Clark Spurlock and he wrote a non-fiction book, Education and the Supreme Court as well as a later novel also about Montana life, Walks Far Woman. That lead me to more research and I found that Clark was born in 1910 and led a life that paralleled young Kasaunka of the novel. The second novel is based on the experiences of Clark’s full blooded Indian grandmother, some of which we learned in the first novel.

I found the book fascinating when I read it in the 70s and my opinion hasn’t changed in all the intervening years. Now I just need to locate a copy of Walks Far Woman and hope it is as good as this novel. show less