The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels

B

I was disappointed by this companion guide to the Sackett series. The historical detail was what I was after... and there WAS some of that, but not nearly enough to satisfy. Unfortunately, the endlessly repetitive, cliched, character descriptions sapped whatever pleasure I took from the rest of the book. L'Amour obviously felt he had a lot more time to add to the Sackett series, and it was a great loss that he died the same year that this book was published (1988).

This is THE book for anyone wishing to make heads or tails of the Sackett family. Even so it still fals short of perfection. For those that wonder what would have been in the future if Louis had lived, there are hints of what he had in mind.
He gives an insight into his process to start and write a story as well as the names used in the Sackett tales.
In the end this book answers many questions and gives the reader a new reason to return to the Sackett tales with a new insight and understanding.

Only for L'Amour fans, of course, but I am one. The author gives a quick synopsis of each of the Sackett titles and thumbnail sketches of the major and minor characters, and the towns and major elements of each setting. Interesting background tidbits, a Sackett family tree that shows the interrelationships between various characters and various generations, and several "glossaries" - lists of songs, narrators, guns, brands, ships, bars and taverns, etc.

Excellent for anyone who would like to know more about people and places in the Sackett series.
- by Kathleen W.

Product Description Little did Louis L'Amour realize back in 1960 when he published The Daybreakers, a novel about two brothers who came west after the Civil War, that he had begun creating what would become perhaps North America's most widely followed literary family: the Sacketts. The stories of ten generations of Sackett men and women as they forged westward from tyranny-wracked seventeenth-century England across the American continent have captivated readers for three decades through seventeen novels with nearly forty millions copies in print. The traditions and adventures of this family of rugged individualists who stand indomitably united when any Sackett is in trouble have inspired country songs, a popular television miniseries show more starring Tom Selleck (as Orrin Sackett) and Sam Elliot (as Tell Sackett), thousands of reader queries—and now, a rare full-length work of non-fiction by the worlds' all-time best-selling frontier novelist. In a 60 Minutes profile in which he hailed Louis L'Amour as "our professor emeritus of how the West was won," correspondent Morley Safer observed that "his plots may be fiction but the details therein are fact." The Sackett Companion is the author's long-savored opportunity to present the research and probe the factors behind his Sackett fiction—novel by novel—and to elaborate on their real and fictional characters, their geography and locales, and their historical eras in encyclopedia-like detail. In this book, subtitled A Personal Guide To The Sackett Novels, L'Amour takes us on a guided tour of his imagination to introduce us to the never-before-told sources and inspirations for these stories and the people and places that populate them. He retraces some of his travels in which he has walked the land the Sacketts walk, reliving such personal memories as the street fight he had on a hot dusty morning in New Mexico that ultimately led to the birth of the Sacketts. From the Publisher Little did Louis L'Amour realize back in 1960 when he published The Daybreakers, a novel about two brothers who came west after the Civil War, that he had begun creating what would become perhaps North America's most widely followed literary family: the Sacketts. The stories of ten generations of Sackett man and women as they forged westward from tyranny-wracked seventeenth-century England across the American continent have captivated readers for three decades through seventeen novels with nearly forty millions copies in print. The traditions and adventures of this family of rugged individualists who stand indomitably united when any Sackett is in trouble have inspired country songs, a popular television miniseries starring Tom Selleck (as Orrin Sackett) and Sam Elliot (as Tell Sackett), thousands of reader queries -- and now, a rare full-length work of non-fiction by the worlds' all-time best-selling frontier novelist. In a 60 Minutes profile in which he hailed Louis L'Amour as "our professor emeritus of how the West was won," correspondent Morley Safer observed that "his plots may be fiction by the details therein are fact." The Sackett Companion is the author's long-savored opportunity to present the research and probe the factors behind his Sackett fiction -- novel by novel -- and to elaborate on their real and fictional characters, their geography and locales, and their historical eras in encyclopedia-like detail. In this book, subtitled A Personal Guide To The Sackett Novels, L'Amour takes us on a guided tour of his imagination to introduce us to the never-before-told sources and inspirations for these stories and the people and places that populate them. He retraces some of his travels in which he "has walked the land the Sacketts walk, reliving such personal memories as the street fight he had on a hot dusty morning in New Mexico that ultimately led to the birth of the Sacketts. show less

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