Don Sturdy Trapped in the Flaming Wilderness, or Unearthing Secrets in Central Asia

Don Sturdy #14

by John W. Duffield as Victor Appleton

203 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1934

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Don Sturdy books were a series of boys' adventures that ran for fifteen volumes in the 1920s and '30s. They were produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate for Grosset & Dunlap, and all but one of them were written by John Duffield using the Victor Appleton house name, which was famous for being applied to the Tom Swift series. The first three books introduce Don, his pal "Brick" Allison, his uncles and their household, and tell how Don is re-united with his shipwrecked family through adventures in South America and Africa after it had been assumed he'd been orphaned. The books suffer from the casual white male superiority attitude of the time but they were well-written, and were a cut above most other such series of the time, with interesting characters and many exciting adventures. (Jenny Jenks is always good for a laugh!) In this one from 1934, the next-to-last book in the series, the boys and Don's uncles go to Mongolia in search of dinosaur fossils and find a whole lot more. They have many adventures, and it's one of the most enjoyable novels in the series.