An excellent book that was extremely well-written, insightful, and very informative. Plus, mine is signed! ( )

Marc Simmons' Kit Carson and His Three Wives came recommended from the afterword of another remarkable book on the famed American legend, Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides. Simmons writes like Sides, maybe even a shade better, which is to say both are masters of gathering multiple accounts, sometimes disputed and often contradictory, and weaving together a narrative that's more like a campfire story than some dry retelling of historical events.

My reading obsession of the moment is the biography of Kit Carson, and by extension the history of the Santa Fe Trail and America's westward expansion throughout the 19th century. Carson was a remarkable man who lived during interesting times. For a country still so relatively young the opportunity to be a part of the inevitable change and upheaval was seemingly just over the horizon. Also, the more I read about Carson the more I can't help but feel a kindred connection to a man whose travels paralleled some of my own. I'm no Kit Carson by any stretch, but there are notable similarities. Carson grew up in Franklin, Missouri; I grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, about 120 miles to the west. At sixteen years of age and bored with his apprentice life, Carson departed for Santa Fe and the great frontier. "Jumping off" was the popular saying of the time. I left for Albuquerque, New Mexico in my early twenties, eager to see a new part of America. My own jumping off experience wasn't as exotic as by horse or wagon train, but the part about starting a new life was every bit as real. The one other great similarity we share, the one I take the most pride in and history suggests Carson did as well, is we both met and married the loves of our lives in that far away land of New Mexico.

Much has been written on Christopher "Kit" Carson's trailblazing life and of his fortuitous junctions with history—the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails, the Mexican-American War, The Battle of San Pasqual, the Battle of Valverde, and the Navajo campaign, etc. In contrast to those portrayals of glory and honor, Simmons' book is a look at the man as a husband and a father. 19th century historical accounts are hard enough to get right; painting a complete picture of one's private family life during that time is downright impossible. Simmons points out what is known, what is contradictory, and occasionally allows for speculation. This incomplete picture only adds to the mystique and legend. It's a cruel irony of history that the very accomplishments Kit Carson is known for are the very ones that stripped him away from his family for months and years at a stretch. ( )