Bowen’s Last Trip Down the Trail

Peter Bowen, the Montana author behind both the Gabriel Du Pré mysteries and the Yellowstone Kelly historical novels, died from “heart failure after a fall” on Wednesday, April 8. He was 74 years old.

“Bowen was a writer’s writer, respected for his wordsmithing—and his irreverence and sardonic humor …,” says an obituary in the Great Falls Tribune. Born in Athens, Georgia, on May 22, 1945, Bowen attended the University of Michigan, and there “discovered the folk-music world at a coffee house on campus, which he ended up managing for a time, bringing in acts like Tom Rush, Doc Watson and a young Joni Mitchell. He also fell in love with south-side Chicago blues.

“Like his character Yellowstone Kelly, Bowen himself was good at more than one thing. He learned the construction trade to put food in his mouth, and those skills would later serve him well as he fell in love with woodworking. He also would work as a cowboy, a folksinger and a fishing guide while he practiced the craft of writing.

“A big, gruff, shaggy man,” according to the Tribune, “he loved many dogs and a very few people. For years he lived by this river or that in Montana, writing and fishing and enjoying his solitude.”

The paper explains that a 16th and final Du Pre novel is awaiting publication, “pending finishing touches from [his wife, Christine] Whiteside, who also served as Bowen’s editor in recent years. At least three other Montana historical novels await discovery by publishers, including Water Rose, a love story and thriller set in the Prohibition era. Bowen was working on a memoir at the time of his death.”

READ MORE: “In Memory of Mystery Author Peter Bowen, 1945-2020,” by MacKenzie Stuart (Murder & Mayhem).