Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures Series

“L’Amour is popular for all the right reasons. His books embody heroic virtues that seem to matter now more than ever.”—The Wall Street Journal

More unpublished works from the archives of Louis L’Amour: complete short stories, partial novels, treatments, and notes that will transport readers from the Western frontier to India, China, and even the future.

Exploring the creative process of an American original, the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures series will uncover the hidden history behind the author’s best known novels . . . and his most mysterious and ambitious unfinished works.

In this second volume, Beau L’Amour examines how his father made the transition from struggling pulp writer to successful novelist and uses his father’s notes, journal entries, and correspondence to continue the process of seeking out how and why many of these never-before-seen manuscripts were written as well as speculating about the ways they might have ended.

These selections include the beginnings of a post-apocalyptic science fiction tale, a proposal for a nonfiction project based on the life of Renaissance-era traveler Ibn Batuta, and two chapters of a historical novel set in India about the origin of L’Amour’s well-known Talon family.

At the other end of the spectrum are classic adventures, such as “In the Measure of Time,” a chance encounter set on the high seas, and a science fiction film treatment set in Mexico, as well as seventeen chapters of a novel that reappears throughout Louis’s journals and letters and speaks to his fascination with post-revolutionary 1950s China, leading him so far as to correspond with the Dalai Lama.

With rare photographs and commentary, this book further maps the journey L’Amour embarked upon to become one of our greatest storytellers and the diverse realms to which his imagination traveled, making him a true American pioneer.

The first of its kind, a unique volume of twenty-one unpublished gems from one of the twentieth century’s most popular and prolific writers
 
Using his father’s handwritten notes, journal entries, and correspondences, Beau L’Amour uncovers how and why many never-before-seen manuscripts were written—and speculates about the ways they might have ended.

These selections celebrate L’Amour’s vision and virtuosity, including the first seven chapters of a powerful novel about the Trail of Tears, a chilling Western horror story, and a tale of the American Revolution featuring a character related to 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, 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.

“Lost treasures indeed . . . a behind-the scenes look at the unpublished work and unrealized aspirations of an iconic writer of Westerns.”—Kirkus Reviews
 
“A valuable addition to [L’Amour’s] literary legacy.”—Booklist

Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures is a project created to release some of the author’s more unconventional manuscripts from the family archives.
 
In Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volumes 1, Beau L’Amour takes the reader on a guided tour through many of the finished and unfinished short stories, novels, and treatments that his father was never able to publish during his lifetime. L’Amour’s never-before-seen first novel, No Traveller Returns, faithfully completed for this program, is a voyage into danger and violence on the high seas. These exciting publications will be followed by Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 2.
 
Additionally, many beloved classics will be rereleased with an exclusive Lost Treasures postscript featuring previously unpublished material, including outlines, plot notes, and alternate drafts. These postscripts tell the story behind the stories that millions of readers have come to know and cherish.