The Sacketts

Louis L’Amour’s Sackett Series of 17 Novels became a driving force in Louis’ career.
http://www.louislamour.com/sackett/

In 1959 Louis L’Amour wrote The Daybreakers, his first novel about his fictional Sackett family. It chronicled the story of two brothers moving west to escape the feuding and poverty of the Tennessee mountains.

The Daybreakers spans a great deal of western history from the early cattle drives to the legal battles and racial tension over land distribution in early New Mexico Territory. It includes some of L’Amour’s greatest characters; the hard bitten Tyrell Sackett and his all too affable older brother Orrin; Tom Sunday, the powerful man who starts as their mentor only to become consumed with hatred and jealousy; the scheming Jonathan Pritts and his lovely daughter Laura, soon to become Laura Sackett; Don Luis, the embattled owner of the Alvarado Land Grant and his feuding lieutenants Juan Torres and Chico Cruz.

While continuing to write Sackett stories set in the old west, Louis L’Amour also went back to establish the family’s roots in Elizabethan England. “Sackett’s Land” and “To the Far Blue Mountains” have much of their action set in the British Isles. “The Warrior’s Path” splits its local between the Spartan conditions of the early Pilgrim colonies and the tropical chaos of Port Royal, Jamaica, headquarters to the pirates plying the Spanish Main. “Jubal Sackett” travels west to what would become Colorado in the time of the Conquistadors.

The jump in time to “Ride the River” unfortunately shows us how much this series suffered from Louis’ death. This story is set in the 1830s and concerns young Echo Sackett and her troubles claiming an inheritance in Philadelphia and along her way home. Louis had originally intended to write another seven or eight Sackett stories. One was to have covered the Revolutionary War period, there was to have been a Mountain Man novel about Tell and Orrin’s father, a story about Tell’s experiences in the Civil War, and several others. Luckily, the stories were not written as an ongoing “serial” and so each can be enjoyed for it’s own sake. In addition, Sackett characters appear momentarily in other L’Amour novels and there are two Tell Sackett short stories available.

After his initial success with “The Daybreakers,” “Lando,” and “Sackett,” L’Amour committed himself to an enormous project; to write a series of adventure stories touching on all eras of American history. Through the eyes of three families, the Sacketts, the Chantrys, and the Talons, he intended to take us on a tour of the past from the 1590s to the 1890s. Sadly, Louis did not live long enough to write more than half of the stories that he intended.

THE SACKETT 17 — Available in Paperback, and as Audio Books on CD and MP3.
http://www.louislamour.com/sackett/