The Adventures of Silk and Shakespeare — Win Blevins

High jinks, close calls, and adventures worthy of Don Quixote abound in this light-hearted romp through the West from Win Blevins, winner of the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contributions to Western Literature

Shakespeare, a former actor of gargantuan proportions, and his sidekick, Silk, a rail-thin teenager with all the brains that Shakespeare lacks, are two of the most improbable mountain men ever to explore the Rocky Mountains. Together, they get into flabbergasting scrapes, from wrestling bears to falling in love with off-limits women in Santa Fe.

Silk and Shakespeare are fictional, but they ride alongside real historical figures such as Antelope Jim Beckwourth, the biracial son of a Virginia plantation owner who became a warrior chief of the Crow Indians, and his lover, Pine Leaf, a legendary woman warrior.

This unlikely foursome gets into jams with dreaded enemies of the Crow and the Blackfeet -- but that's to be expected of characters who, like the man of La Mancha, dream of “enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, tempests, and other impossible follies.”