Written while Nat Love was living in California, this autobiography is an invaluable record of the wildness of the American West in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Filled with tales of adventure and danger,
The Life and Adventures of Nat Love
is a moving self portrait of a man who defied the circumstances of his birth and played a minor role in the transformation of the American landscape.
Born into slavery, Nat Love is raised on a plantation in Tennessee alongside two siblings. Taught to read and write by his father Sampson, Nat becomes resourceful and intelligent at a young age. Forced to work, first as a slave and then, after emancipation, as a sharecropper, Love dreams of escaping the South in order to make a name for himself. At 16, already well known as a breaker of horses, he heads West for work as a cowboy.
On the wide-open plains of Kansas, he learns to shoot and survive with limited resources while fighting off rustlers and other nefarious characters. In Deadwood, Dakota Territory, 1876, Love wins a major rodeo competition and earns the nickname "Deadwood Dick." Despite his successes, Love is forced to continue his itinerant lifestyle, and travels south into Arizona. Exciting and beautifully written,
is a record of the life of a forgotten American hero.
With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Nat Love's
is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.