Elm Springs author wins prestegious Spur awards for debut novel

James Crownover wasn't a writer. He retired from a career as a civil engineer with Ozarks Electric Cooperative. Then he started writing -- in private.

"I didn't tell anyone," he said. "I wrote for over a year. I only told my wife the secret after I finished the book.

"I didn't know what they'd do," he said about the secrecy. "I guess I thought they'd throw it away."

Good thing they didn't. This secretive engineer this year won two Spur awards for his first novel -- a rare fete -- from the Western Writers of America.

Crownover's book Wild Ran the Rivers was released just two weeks ago by Five Trails Press. Judged by a committee of fellow writers of Western literature, the book was named best Western historical novel and best first novel. The Spur awards -- literally spurs beautifully mounted on plaques -- were presented at the Western Writers convention in June in Lubbock, Texas.

"Western Writers of America annually honors writers for distinguished writing about the American West with the Spur Awards," reads the organization's website. "Since 1953, the Spur Awards have been considered one of the most prestigious awards in American literature."

Crownover, who lives in Elm Springs, is in good company. "Winners of the Spur Awards in previous years include Larry McMurtry for Lonesome Dove, Michael Blake for Dances With Wolves, Glendon Swarthout for The Shootist and Tony Hillerman for Skinwalker," the website continues.

"I was so excited when I saw the results," said Dusty Richards of Springdale, whom Crownover credits as a mentor. "Nobody has ever done that before. There was some tough competition for a quiet man from Arkansas."

Richards is finishing several years of service to the Western Writers of America as president and past president. He also hangs two Spur awards on his own wall -- although for two different pieces.

"I've known Jim really for about 30 years," said Richards, who also worked at the electric cooperative. "About the time he retired, he stopped me in the hall and told me he was thinking about writing a Western book and asked if I could help him.

"I was amazed. He'd been in the closet."

Crownover said he wanted to write a Western novel because he knew he could do it well. "I wanted to prove to myself that I could," he said. "I wanted to tell something that was worth telling. I try to be sure it's something someone wants to read."

Crownover has read just about everything western, but especially nonfiction, he said. Book shelves in his home and shop are lined with editions of J. Frank Dobie, Ben K. Green, Will Bagley, Tony Hillerman and his daughter Anne Hillerman, Will James and Clarence O. Mufford, who created the Hopalong Cassidy character. But his favorite Western-type is Eugene Manlove Rhodes, nicknamed "the cowboy chronicler."

"Everybody reads Louis L'Amour," Crownover said. "But even O. Henry wrote a lot of Western novels."

Before he retired, Crownover could find the time to read but not to write, he said. Now, he writes about four hours a day, six days a week in his shop behind his Elm Springs home.

"Four years ago, I said, 'I've got the time. Let's see if I can do it.' I did! I've written four books in two years. I've got the stories in my head."

Battle of Half Moon Mountain, the second book in the series, is set to publish Nov. 18. Nightenders will publish Triple Play, not part of the series, will be released in March, Crownover said.

AUTHENTIC

Wild Ran the Rivers starts the tale of a Cherokee family which migrates from Tennessee to New Mexico in four generations, and the narrator of the story is the fourth generation. It includes river pirates and even the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812, in what was then part of the Louisiana Territory.

"If there is time to read only one book this month, it should be this one," said Hazel Rumney, Crownover's editor at Five Trails. "It's an incredible beginning of a fantastic odyssey of the Harris family that doesn't stop with book one of the Five Trails West series."

"I thought it was a darn good book," Richards said.

"Mine's not that 'shoot 'em up stuff,'" Crownover said of his stories. "I try to get as authentic as possible,"

Maps seem at home on the surfaces in his shop, and books line the walls. Crownover diligently researches to correctly set his novels in history.

In the acknowledgement at the beginning of Wild Ran the Rivers, Crownover lists his source for information about the New Madrid earthquakes: The New Madrid Earthquakes by James Lal Pennick Jr. (University of Missouri, 1981). "All the events are described as were given by actual witnesses to the quakes, and I have adapted and applied these events to the characters in my story," Crownover wrote.

"Wild Ran the Rivers was a difficult edit for me," Rumney said. "It has a complicated plot with several intertwining subplots. As the Harris family journeys down the Mississippi River, they are attacked by river pirates! (Who knew there were pirates on the Mississippi?)

"Jim's words paint a vivid and sometimes chilling picture of the life of the children who saw their parents murdered and were then taken to an island hideout and sold into slavery. Ruth Harris was forced into a mock wedding ceremony with one of the pirates.

"The details of this island prison will be something that the reader will find impossible to forget," Rumney continued. "The detailed accuracy of the New Madrid Earthquake of 1811-1812 is horrifying, as well as visually described with a clarity that is not always found in historicals. Jim's choice of words and feeling for his characters are richly described, and the plot simmers continuously, boiling over at periodic intervals to prevent the reader from closing the book."

"How dedicated he was to write these books," Richards said. "All the time and effort that went into them, and that won the award. He researched very thoroughly -- the whole thing."

"You hear a lot of stories that people tell -- usually word of mouth by their descendants," Crownover continued. He tracks them down.

"In the first book, they end up in central Arkansas, in Van Buren County," Crownover shared. "There was a huge Cherokee Indian village at Clinton and another at Shirley. The reservation once covered most of North Arkansas."

Displays of arrowheads found in Van Buren County hang above the fireplace in the author's Elm Springs home. He grew up in Clinton, then studied at the University of Arkansas and "married a Fayetteville girl."

He served many years as a pilot in the Air Force. In fact, he still builds model airplanes -- more than 300, starting when he was 10. Crownover's writing studio doubles as a hanger for those models.

Currently, Crownover researches for a novel about the legendary glory days of the deputy U.S. marshals, based on the frontier in Fort Smith. Bass Reeves makes an appearance the book, as does "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker, Crownover said.

"I'm pleased with his path," Richards said. "He's got four more books to write. It's a great way to start out."

NAN Our Town on 10/08/2015