Penny Duncklee

I Bit the Silver Spoon

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"A narrative of a man's life in the southwest - what brought him there and how he came to love the land, its peoples, and its challenges. John Duncklee's memoirs remind us that individualism, personal courage, and honesty can still thrive in America."
-Jim Woolard, award winning author of Thunder in the Valley, Winds of Autumn, Blood at Dawn and Cold Moon

"In his fascinating memoir, John Duncklee shows how an East Coast outcast became a cowboy, rancher, student, wrangler, teacher, environmentalist, lecturer, furniture marker, rebel, reprobate, and one of the original voices of contemporary Southwestern literature. Writers, readers, ranchers, and working cowhands everywhere should all be grateful John Duncklee bit that silver spoon and lived to write about it."
-Johnny D. Boggs, two-time Spur Award-winning author of Camp Ford and East of the Border

"I Bit the Silver Spoon in the authentic life-story of a died-in-the-wool cowpoke still writing and raising hell down New Mexico-way. John Duncklee is the last of a dying breed-a cowboy-adventurer out of the pages of Louis L'Amour or Luke Short, with a touch of the mad, irascible poet added like whiskey to campfire coffee. How Big John came West, and all he did out there amidst the sage and saguaros, after growing up amongst Eastern wealth, is riveting poetic, inspiring, bittersweet reading.
-Peter Brandold, author of the Lou Prophet and Rogue Lawman novels published by Berkley

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Reviews:

By Matthew P. Mayo

This review is from: I Bit the Silver Spoon (Paperback)

John Duncklee's I BIT THE SILVER SPOON is the autobiography of a man whose difficult early years helped color and shape his long and varied eventful life. And in that life, Duncklee has done a bit of everything, from ranching to teaching to protesting to artistic creation, and much more. Throughout the book readers see how each new venture helped broaden the author's approach to life. He pulls no punches, readily admitting when he made mistakes, but then went on to try to learn from them.

Duncklee comes across as a genuine man of hard-earned conviction and of kindness, a man unafraid to speak his mind when others stay silent. It may have cost him in various ways over the years, but I suspect the rich variety of his life is in part an indication of how expressing one's opinion is a healthy and helpful thing.

John Duncklee's writing style is conversational and inclusive, and peppered with wry humor that kept me going from first to last without pause. The man is an old-school storyteller of the first order, and I look forward to reading more of his numerous other works.

 

Penny Duncklee