Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures ─ Unfinished Manuscripts, Mysterious Stories, and Lost Notes from One of the World's Most Popular Novelists

Twenty-one unfinished projects from one of the twentieth century’s most popular and prolific writers, lovingly reconstructed by the author’s son

Delving deep into the creative process of an American original, the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures project brings to light complete, unpublished novels as well as the hidden story behind the most mysterious and ambitious of his works. In this first collection, Beau L’Amour presents nearly two dozen never-before-seen drafts, using his father’s handwritten notes, journal entries, and correspondence, along with his own memories, to provide biographical context and speculate on how the pieces might have ended.

The scope of these selections celebrates L’Amour’s vision and virtuosity, including variations on the traditional Western—the first seven chapters of a powerful novel about the Cherokee Trail of Tears and a story of the American Revolution featuring a character who may be one of L’Amour’s well-known Sackett family. At the other end of the spectrum are classic adventures, such as The Golden Tapestry, set in 1960s Istanbul, as well as several uniquely different attempts at what would have been the most profoundly intimate of all of L’Amour’s novels, a saga of reincarnation that stretches from a time before time to the period of Alexander the Great, and on to Warlord-Era China.

Illustrated with rare photographs and copies of handwritten notes, this book reveals the L’Amour you have never known, his personal struggles as a writer, and the contest between mortality and a literary legacy too big for one life to contain.

Our foremost storyteller of the American West, Louis L’Amour has thrilled a nation by chronicling the adventures of the brave men and woman who settled the frontier. There are more than three hundred million copies of his books in print around the world.
 
Beau L’Amour is a writer, art director, and editor. He has written and produced several films, including USA Network’s The Diamond of Jeru. Since 1988 he has been the manager of the estate of his father, Louis L’Amour.