Reading Rendezvous is a weekly feature created by the Fern Team for the Book Blogger Creativity Project that acts as a travel guide, highlighting places we would like to visit and recommending books that take place there.
This week I would like to again feature South Dakota, but this time I want to feature the BEAUTIFUL Black Hills! The book that I will be featuring takes place in Deadwood, SD!
Deadwood is basically a historic old gambling town. I spent my 21st birthday there!
There's lots to see and do in the Deadwood. I mean, besides stuffing yourself silly at any of the various casinos that offer up all you can eat prime rib and crab leg buffets!
You can obviously gamble. At giant machines.
You can get old time photos taken! I actually got these taken in the town where I live. Because when we went for my 21st birthday, my boyfriend refused to get the pictures taken with me there. It was the only thing I requested for my birthday trip!
You can take the Spearfish scenic byway and get a sweet view of the Black Hills.
It's also not too terribly long of a drive to Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse memorial, Custer State Park (wildlife park), Bear Country USA (another wildlife park... WITH BEARS), Reptile Gardens (it's kinda like a zoo.. for snakes and lizards and birds). In August, the Black Hills also hosts the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally! Which is basically awesome.
So basically what you should gather from this is that the Black Hills is amazing! And definitely worth seeing, should you ever decide to vacation to South Dakota.
On to the book that takes place in Deadwood, SD!
Deadwood by Pete Dexter
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Publication Date: March 12, 1986
Pages: 365
Summary (from Goodreads):
DEADWOOD, DAKOTA TERRITORIES, 1876: Legendary gunman Wild Bill Hickcock and his friend Charlie Utter have come to the Black Hills town of Deadwood fresh from Cheyenne, fleeing an ungrateful populace. Bill, aging and sick but still able to best any man in a fair gunfight, just wants to be left alone to drink and play cards. But in this town of played-out miners, bounty hunters, upstairs girls, Chinese immigrants, and various other entrepeneurs and miscreants, he finds himself pursued by a vicious sheriff, a perverse whore man bent on revenge, and a besotted Calamity Jane. Fueled by liquor, sex, and violence, this is the real wild west, unlike anything portrayed in the dime novels that first told its story.
Fun fact about Deadwood and Wild Bill Hickock: You can visit the saloon that he was assassinated in while playing cards. That is where the Dead Man's Hand came from. It's the hand of cards that he was holding when he died. You can also visit his and Calamity Jane's graves in the cemetery!
Links to the rest of my Fern Team!
Lizzie @ Big Books And Grande Lattes
Tamara @ Tamaraniac
Katherine @ Neon Yeti Reads
Ashley @ Books Buying Beauty
Shayna @ Bibliophilia: A Love Story
Lauren @ SERIESous Book Reviews
Karen @ My Train Of Thoughts On
Nori @ Readwritelove28
This is a great feature! I especially love the pictures in this post. Especially the one you look like a robber XD
ReplyDeleteI like our feature a lot more than I originally thought I was going to! I love that it leaves room to add all the fun pictures! That old time photo where I'm robbing my boyfriend is one of my favorite pictures from that shoot! I had a TERRIBLE time keeping a serious face when I was robbing him. Haha!
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