Archives West Finding Aid

Peter Bowen is the author of two series of novels set in the American west. One centers around Luther Sage “Yellowstone” Kelly, a fictionalized rendering of a historical figure of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. The other centers around a detective named Gabriel Du Pré, a Canadian Metis living in Toussaint, Montana.

Bowen was born in 1945 and spent at least part of his childhood in the Rocky Mountains, moving from Denver, Colorado, to Bozeman, Montana, at the age of 10. Bowen went on to study ceramics at the University of Michigan and by 1979 he had moved back to the Rocky Mountain region living in Idaho and Montana.

In 1987, Bowen published his first novel, Yellowstone Kelly: Gentleman and Scout. Yellowstone Kelly, like many of the other books in the series, is a picaresque novel chronicling the protagonist’s reluctant involvement in historical events as geographically disparate as Colonel Nelson Miles’ campaign against the Nez Percé and the Boer War. In his essay about the Yellowstone Kelly series in All Our Stories Are Here: Critical Perspectives on Montana Literature, Gregory Morris writes “beneath that ludic, playful history lies a more subversive ideological critique of the American mythos and of the American identity.” As of 2010, Bowen has published three other titles featuring Yellowstone Kelly including Kelly Blue, Imperial Kelly, and Kelly and the Three-toed Horse.

In addition to the Yellowstone Kelly novels, Bowen has published 13 novels featuring Gabriel Du Pré. The first of these novels was Coyote Wind. The Gabriel Du Pré novels often pit the townspeople of Touissant attempting to protect their community from outsiders of various ilk. The Gabriel Du Pré novels have drawn critical praise from The New York Times Book Review and Washington Post Book World, amongst other publications.

In the early nineties, Bowen published a number of articles in Forbes FYI under the pseudonym Coyote Jack.

Peter Edward Bowen died April 8, 2020 in Livingston, Montana.