I feel extremely happy to say: Announcing, for the first time since the late-1960’s, this book is back in print and available on Amazon as a Kindle Book. Soon it will also be on Barnes and Noble as well as Itunes.
Recent Back Story: I got an email from a relative who lives in Canada of the famous explorer Louis Jolliet. He had purchased all the old copies of my mom’s book about Jolliet he could find, and would I consider republishing it as an Kindle Edition? He, himself, was even willing to help do it, and produced the initial scans to kick-start me into action. That got me all excited and it now appears I’m doing the entire catalog of 20+ books, plus using my paintings for new covers for all except a couple of them that the likes of Thomas Hart Benton and others illustrated.
Who was Virginia? Here’s the original jacket back, now over 50 years old:
Virginia S. Eifert may have lived her entire life in Springfield,Illinois, but her passion was traveling and learning about North America’s natural and human history on a much broader scale. Born in 1911, she was ill through much of high school and never attained a high school diploma. Instead, she began journaling, learning nature on an intimate level, then developing a ‘nature news’ publication that she distributed around her neighborhood. At 17, she was asked to write a column in this same style for one of the largest newspapers in Illinois, and by the time she was 19 she was asked to create, write, illustrate and edit a monthly magazine for the Illinois State Museum. She continued with this effort for 326 issues until 1966 and her early tragic death at age 56. It seemed Virginia knew she had little time – and let none of it pass unproductively. At the museum she also published a series of natural history booklets and wrote for many nationally distributed nature magazines such as Audubon and Nature.
In 1954, she published her first major book for a New York publisher, Dodd Mead, and went on to write 19 more, winning several national awards in the process.
Oh, and while she was doing all this, she somehow found the time and health to have me, her side-kick for my first 18 years. http://virginia.larryeifert.com for more information. Her vivid use of a life inspires me even today.
Who was Louis Jolliet? This from the jacket bio:
“This vivid biography is of the great American woodsman and explorer, Louis Jolliet, is presented in the many aspects of his remarkable life, and skillfully told by the award-winning Mid-western author, Virginia S. Eifert. Two memorial collections of Eifert’s work attest to the brilliance of her writing skills, and that is not lost in this book. It reads like a grand adventure, which in real life it certainly was. First published in 1961 and illustrated with maps of Jolliet’s world, it is now back in print here after the 50th anniversary of its first edition.”
You can see it here on Amazon. It’s quite a fun read, and seems like it’d be a great movie.
Go to Amazon and buy this Kindle Book for only $9.99
(or there’s also a used paperback copy for $137.38 from an Amazon used bookstore!!)
Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert
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