Trappers of the Ozarks - Book By Lewis B. Miller Synopsis: Two farm boys near St. Louis start off on a trapping trip to a region called Upper Louisiana, now Missouri. Their adventure was hundreds of miles into the wilds of the Ozarks. Besides victuals and camping provisions, they took with them two dogs and Spunky, the mule. In due time they find their destination, and established their headquarters in the cave of a huge limestone cliff along the river. Here they store their bounty of various wild animal skins, salt and honey. At the close of the season, they begin homeward, but not without great hardship and peril. They fall prey to wild beasts, Indians, and other human piracy on their trail with their cargo of an honestly earned harvest. While this is a great story for sportsmen, the reader will realize the contrast between a trip of trapping, hunting or fishing merely for sport, and an expedition like that found in Trappers of the Ozarks, where the stakes are a matter of life and death. About the Author: Among the least known but better authors of tales of adventure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century era was Texan Lewis B. Miller, whose stories appeared in serial form in a weekly farm paper, The National Stockman and Farmer, and a regional edition of the publication, The Pennsylvania Stockman and Farmer. Lewis B. Miller was born at Blocker Creek, Cooke County, Texas, on May 27, 1861. His father’s name was Henry Miller and his mother Lurilla Osburn Miller. He received his early education in frontier schools in Texas. In 1881 he obtained an A.B. degree at Texas Christian University. He moved to Marlin, Texas, in 1931, apparently to live with relatives, and died there on July 26, 1933. He was buried at Hico, Texas, which is about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth. Lewis B. Miller was an excellent writer with a good education, and his stories were very accurate from a geographical and historical standpoint. He wrote adult, young adult tales of adventure, dealings with frontier life, cattle driving. His base writing is about the southwest frontier pushing civilization into the wild west, French and Spanish territories or into the Indian’s hunting grounds. Besides frontier life, his novels cover a wide field of subjects, such as: homesteading, trapping, hunting, fur trading, logging, rafting, gold-seeking, Indian life and about all that confronted frontier life which most Americans have forgotten and many have never known. Many early American statesmen and patriotic pioneers appear in his stories, who are authentic. The frontier stories involved confrontation with the Indians and the hard life of the pioneers. Due to the fact that Miller’s stories appeared originally only in a farm weekly, they did not receive a wide circulation and thus remained unknown to much of the reading public. This neglect has been partially corrected by a small church foundation press in Pennsylvania. They have published a number of soft cover reprints of his work and more are pending. For those who collect adventure books for the pleasure of reading, there can be no better investment than in Lewis B. Miller tales. By Robert E. Walters