"He was a very enthusiastic man. He typically used five exclamation points where the rest of us would use one," said Richard Rhodes, author of John James Audubon, last year's acclaimed biography. Rhodes will be in Utah on Saturday to speak at Sundance Resort.

You wouldn't necessarily expect such an upbeat story from an author whose books typically deal with, in his words, "human violence - how it comes about and how to survive it." Most of his 20 books cover sobering territory: The Making of the Atomic Bomb won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award. Dark Sun, about the development of the hydrogen bomb, was a Pulitzer finalist. He also wrote Masters of Death, about the Holocaust, and Hole in the World, recalling his childhood at the hands of an abusive stepmother.

Writing about Audubon was "a very pleasant change," Rhodes said by phone from his home in California. "Audubon was a wonderful, fascinating, charming man, and he lived a difficult but wonderfully productive life."

Audubon is best known for Birds of America, a compilation of hundreds of bird paintings done in the 19th century. But he was also a businessman, an explorer and a writer whose work inspired transcendentalists, environmentalists and countless bird lovers.

Before Rhodes' book was published last year, a major biography of Audubon had not been written for 40 years. He was portrayed as something of a charlatan, morphing into different people for different audiences and getting involved in risky business ventures.

But in Audubon, Rhodes found a character who he felt had not been given his due - and who embodied the American character type emerging in the young nation. "This young generation was the first to leave home and move west of the Appalachians," Rhodes said. "They developed new identities for themselves. . . . In the process, this generation experienced and learned and developed these qualities that we think of as quintessentially American: optimism, pragmatism, individualism."

Audubon was also a forebearer of the conservation movement. His critics like to point out that he often shot and posed his subject animals before painting them - an accepted practice at the time. But "he was one of the last people to see and record what was the last of primordial America," Rhodes said.

"By the time he came back to America after he'd finished publishing Birds of America - and he published Birds of America in 1839 - a lot of that was already gone," Rhodes said. "Many of the birds he drew were extinct within 100 years."

One of Rhodes' missions - one that critics point to as a great success of the book - was his portrayal of Audubon's wife, Lucy. Past biographies painted her as a detractor of Rhodes' work who complained about how his passions eroded support for her and the family.

Rhodes said, "She has been profoundly misunderstood as a long-suffering victim of his ambitions," especially his dream to publish a giant book of his paintings - a venture that required him to raise more than $2 million in today's dollars.

"If you read their correspondence, you find that she was even more enthusiastic than he was," Rhodes said. The project could bring them prestige and money lost after the 1819 bankruptcy of their steam-mill business, and it might bolster her husband's self-esteem, damaged by his failure in business. "Most of all," Rhodes said, she supported him "because she loved her husband deeply."

Flock together

Richard Rhodes will speak at Sundance Resort, in the north fork of Provo Canyon, Saturday at noon as part of the Tree Room Author Series. Tickets are $75, which includes brunch and a signed copy of his book. For information, call the activities desk at 801-223-4567.