Duke's Mixture

Rear cover notes: "With thirty-one books to his credit, written over a creative life of half a century, Fred Manfred has established himself as the bard of Siouxland - yes - and of mid-America, too, and of all the West. In a recent letter, Pulitzer Prize-winner Wallace Stegner noted Manfred's great capacity for work, his vigorous youth, and his amazing literary stamina. How does Manfred do it? This collection of essays, Duke's Mixture, goes a long way toward an explanation. Here are the stories behind the making of Lord Grizzly - and another about the divine nature of the Indian universe - and of the Anglo universe. Here are five brilliant interviews that probe the nature of western American novels - and novelists - and the rich lode of western lore about Indians and non-Indians, much of it yet to be explored. And here is Manfred's energetic apologia for the place he calls roots, Siouxland, U.S.A. And more. These essays are Manfred at his most combative, versatile, and sympatico, for the tyro an introduction, for the Manfred buff a running commentary on fifty years of vigorous intellectual life in the heartland of America."