The Owl Hunt: A Barnaby Skye Novel Book

The latest in the long-running tale of the beloved mountain man, Barnaby Skye, occurs early in the history of the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, where Skye’s mixed-blood son, Dirk, teaches school.  A total eclipse of the sun panics the Shoshones, and leads a dour fifteen-year-old boy to rename himself Owl, the most dreaded of all totemic birds. He begins to stir discontent, teaching a doctrine of freedom from white men, and giving the Shoshones a new dance.

Owl takes his vision of returning to the old ways, free of reservation life, to the people. The Indian agent and soldiers react violently, see insurrection and subversion in it.  Dirk, his own two bloods warring, tries to mediate and only alienates the army, the Indian Bureau, and the Shoshones.

But only Dirk Skye can prevent a massacre.

Publishers Weekly

The prolific Wheeler's sad and tragic 18th Skye's West novel (after North Star) is a crushing commentary on the government's shameful treatment of the Shoshone. It's 1878 and redoubtable series hero Barnaby Skye is dead; his son, Dirk, a half-white, half-Shoshone reservation schoolteacher, struggles to teach Indian children the white man's education. After Waiting Wolf, one of his students, has a vision from an owl that the whites will go away and the rich Shoshone life will return, Waiting Wolf re-christens himself as Owl and becomes the beloved prophet of desperate followers called Dreamers. Rumors of this movement frighten the corrupt Indian agent and the army, leading them to react in a predictably irrational and violent manner, even after Dirk's warnings that the movement is far from an uprising. Add an illicit (and chaste) romance, murderous cowboys, and a peculiar cattle rancher, and Wheeler has dished up another powerful story of cultures in conflict, misunderstandings, ignorance, and arrogance, though Barnaby's absence is sorely felt. (Dec.)