Nebraska Authors

Boye, accompanied by several descendants of Dull Knife, walked 1000 miles (Oklahoma to Montana) as they followed the nineteenth-century trail of the Cheyenne and Boye prepared to write Holding Stone Hands: On the Trail of the Cheyenne Exodus. Boye has written for a variety of publications including Vermont Magazine, Yankee, Southern Humanities Review and The Old Farmer’s Almanac and is the author of The Complete Roadside Guide to Nebraska (with forwards to different editions by fellow Nebraska writers Wright Morris and Ron Hansen), a unique personal update of the Federal Writers Project's Nebraska Guide of the 1930s. Born and raised in Lincoln, he is also the author of A Guide to the Ghosts of Lincoln, which has been the most frequently pilfered book in the Lincoln City Library collection. A Guide to the Ghosts of Lincoln gained an instant and enduring following and has never been out of print. Many of Boye's books combine history, travel writing and memoir.

Heritage Room Boye collections include: Poster for A Guide to the Ghosts of Lincoln. Original typescript for Joaquin Miller! Tonight!!! A play in two acts, c. 1982 by Alan Boye. Alan Boye's Journals and Field Notes, comprising journals, field notes, and maps that record Boye's hiking and travel experiences for Holding Stone Hands: On the Trail of the Cheyenne Exodus, 1999. As the donation correspondence notes, the maps are based on research and information from Cheyenne descendants who walked with Boye when he retraced the route in 1995. "These maps are likely the only existing record of the route the Cheyennes took in their flight north." Also in this collection are background journals to Boye's Tales from the Journey of the Dead: Ten Thousand Years on an American Desert, 2006.

Contemporary authors with an interest in Native Americans include: Joe Starita, Stew Magnuson, David Wishart, and John R. Wunder.

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