L'Amour, born in 1908, grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota as the son of a veterinarian. His mother loved to read, and his home had a library of several hundred books. He grew up loving to read and frequenting the city library! L'Amour read Zane Grey, Charles Dickens and Jack London all of whom would influence his later writing. By the time of his death, the author had an extensive library that contained some 17,000 volumes that included maps, diaries and personal papers. He was a curious person and wanted  to learn everything he could about life.

When L'Amour's family fell on hard times in the '20s, he left home at the age of fifteen and worked at many jobs: seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, and as an officer on tank destroyers during World War II. There were many other jobs and extensive travel that provided varied life experiences that would strengthen his stories.

L'Amour settled in Los Angeles with the intention of becoming a writer of Westerns. He published his first full novel, Hondo, in 1953. He became America's most popular author and one of the four best selling novelists in the world. There are 140 million of his books in print, and in 1983, he became the first novelist ever to be awarded a special National Gold Medal by Congress for his distinguished career as an author.

This author wrote seventeen novels about the fictional Sackett family. They were made into television serials and many of them are still aired often! At least thirty of his novels were made into movies some of which included: Cross-Fire Trail; Hondo; How the West was Won; Man Called Noon; and The Shadow Riders.

L'Amour was a wonderful, talented writer who had the ability to make you into one of the characters in his stories. You feel---as you read---that you are right in the middle of the story. L'Amour's description of the terrain, geography, and the weather contribute to his ability to transport the reader into another time and place.

His works are a pleasure to read, and I have read several of his works twice including The Walking Drum, which is a novel based on 12th Century frontier life of caravans in Medieval Europe.

By the time of his death on June 10, 1988, L'Amour had written 100 books, which included novels, short stories, and non-fiction; he left one last book which would be published later.

L'Amour claimed that he was "just a storyteller, a guy with a seat by the campfire." But I think that when he died, the world lost one of its best authors, and his stories live on through his readers.

Visit Comer Library for books by Louis L'Amour a few of which include: