Sackett (the Novel)
This is the third of the Sackett novels and published in 1961 (Daybreakers was the first, published in 1960, though it is not the first chronologically). It tells the story of William Tell Sackett, a Union Army veteran who makes his way West in the years following the War, hoping to settle down at the right place as a rancher. He is the main character in several other Sackett books including Mojave Crossing, The Lonely Men, Treasure Mountain, and The Sackett Brand, among others. He is the brother of Tyrel and Orrin Sackett, who went west to New Mexico circa 1870-1872. Tell is also the 'ugly duckling' (by his own admission) of the family. However, he does meet a beautiful woman named 'Ange Kerry' in Sackett and falls in love. He loses her when she is brutally raped and murdered in "The Sackett Brand.". He meets another lady in Treasure Mountain, and presumably marries her. L'Amour has left the ending to the imagination of the reader in this novel.
L'Amour confirmed to Dr. John Sackett that he found the name on Sackett's Well in a place west of Yuma. The desert watering hole was named for cavalry Lt. Delos B. Sackett who was an Indian fighter in the region before the Civil War. L'Amour has used names and places that roughly parallel a real branch of the Sackett Family, but the accounts are fictional.
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