The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters

The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters

First edition cover
Author	Robert Lewis Taylor
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Historical novel
Publisher	Doubleday
Publication date	1958
Media type	Print (hardback and paperback) and audiobook (audio cassette)
Pages	544 pages

The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel written by Robert Lewis Taylor, which was later made into a short-running television series on ABC from September 1963 through March 1964, featuring Kurt Russell as Jaimie, Dan O'Herlihy as his father, "Doc" Sardius McPheeters, and Michael Witney and Charles Bronson as the wagon masters, Buck Coulter and Linc Murdock, respectively.

Plot introduction

Taylor's realistic novel—despite the Tom-Sawyer-like protagonist and narrator, it is aimed at an adult audience and contains episodes that would have kept it off any school list at the time—was published in 1958 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year. In it, the young Jaimie (spelled with two "i"s) accompanies a wagon train headed from St. Louis, Missouri, to California after the 1849 Gold Rush.

Plot summary

The novel alternates between Jaimie describing his journey by wagon train and commentary by his father, a Scottish doctor with an effervescent personality whose judgment is often clouded by his weakness for gambling and strong drink.

The novel contains, in graphic detail, some intense Native American customs, especially rites of passage.

Publishing history

• Doubleday & Company. 1st edition. 1958. ISBN 1-141-39958-X. (may also be: ISBN 0-385-04930-7.)
• Pocket. 1960. Paperback. ISBN 1-122-55331-5.
• Arbor House. 1985. Paperback. ISBN 0-87795-756-8.
• Main Street Books. Paperback reissue edition. 544 pages. December 1, 1992. ISBN 0-385-42222-9.
• Chivers Audio Books. Audio cassette. October 1993. ISBN 1-56054-867-3.

External links

"The Guns of Diablo", 1964, Charles Bronson, Kirk Russell, Susan Oliver

• IMDB entry for Jaimie McPheeters television series
• Photos of the first edition of The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters

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Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Previously the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel from 1917–1947

1918–1925

• His Family by Ernest Poole (1918)
• The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1919)
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1921)
• Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1922)
• One of Ours by Willa Cather (1923)
• The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (1924)
• So Big by Edna Ferber (1925)

1926–1950

• Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (1926; declined)
• Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield (1927)
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1928)
• Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (1929)
• Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge (1930)
• Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes (1931)
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (1932)
• The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling (1933)
• Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Pafford Miller (1934)
• Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (1935)
• Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis (1936)
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1937)
• The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (1938)
• The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1939)
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940)
• In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (1942)
• Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair (1943)
• Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (1944)
• A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (1945)
• All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1947)
• Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener (1948)
• Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (1949)
• The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1950)

1951–1975

• The Town by Conrad Richter (1951)
• The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (1952)
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953)
• A Fable by William Faulkner (1955)
• Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (1956)
• A Death in the Family by James Agee (1958)
• The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (1959)
• Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1960)
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961)
• The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (1962)
• The Reivers by William Faulkner (1963)
• The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau (1965)
• The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter (1966)
• The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (1967)
• The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (1968)
• House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (1969)
• The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford (1970)
• Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1972)
• The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (1973)
• No award given (1974)
• The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1975)

1976–2000

• Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (1976)
• No award given (1977)
• Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978)
• The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (1979)
• The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1980)
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1981)
• Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (1982)
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983)
• Ironweed by William Kennedy (1984)
• Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (1985)
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1986)
• A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1987)
• Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988)
• Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1989)
• The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (1990)
• Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (1991)
• A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1992)
• A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993)
• The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994)
• The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1995)
• Independence Day by Richard Ford (1996)
• Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (1997)
• American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1998)
• The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1999)
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)

2001–present

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2001)
• Empire Falls by Richard Russo (2002)
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003)
• The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2004)
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2005)
• March by Geraldine Brooks (2006)
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2007)
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2008)
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2009)
• Tinkers by Paul Harding (2010)
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011)
• No award given (2012)
• The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (2013)
• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2014)
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2015)
• The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2016)
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2017)
• Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2018)
• The Overstory by Richard Powers (2019)
• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2020)
• The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2021)
• The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen (2022)
• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver / Trust by Hernan Diaz (2023)

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