Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dance on the Wind | 1995 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 2 | Borderlords | 1986 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 3 | Buffalo Palace | 1996 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 4 | Carry the Wind | 1982 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 5 | One-Eyed Dream | 1988 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 6 | Crack in the Sky | 1997 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 7 | Ride the Moon Down | 1998 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 8 | Death Rattle | 1999 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 9 | Wind Walker | 2001 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
The Titus Bass series was the project that launched Johnston’s career. Carry the Wind, the first book, was rejected by 29 publishers before it was accepted and published in 1982, then won the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer’s Award for best first fiction. It introduces Titus “Scratch” Bass as a young man who leaves his Missouri farm to follow a pair of mountain men west, learning how to survive in the wilderness under the tutelage of the older trapper Silas Cooper.
The nine books follow Bass from his apprenticeship through decades of life in the Rockies, trapping beaver, attending the annual summer rendezvous at various sites in present-day Wyoming, fighting off Blackfoot raiders, forming alliances with Crow bands, and watching the trade that defines his world slowly die. The series is partly a biography of a fictional man and partly a history of the fur trade itself, covering the shift from the early profitable years through the collapse caused by European fashion changes and overhunting by the 1840s.
Johnston’s research here was as thorough as in the Plainsmen books. The geography of the Wind River Mountains, the Yellowstone basin, and the Great Basin is accurate, and the details of daily life reflect serious engagement with primary sources. The final volume, Wind Walker (2001), was published the year Johnston died.