I wanted to like this novel more than I did. For its length (464 pages), it promises somewhat more than it delivers. I had the same reaction to the auI wanted to like this novel more than I did. For its length (464 pages), it promises somewhat more than it delivers. I had the same reaction to the author’s The Last Crossing.(reviewed here a while ago). There are a lot of ideas and food for thought in this novel about character, friendship, responsibility, Native Americans, the frontier, and U.S.-Canadian relations. But in the end it’s hard to say what it all adds up to. You can puzzle if you like over the title. Who among the novel’s male characters is the “good man”? Is there one at all?...
Willa Cather was a fine writer, with a special take on what it was like to grow up in a small town on the plains among descendants of immigrant homestWilla Cather was a fine writer, with a special take on what it was like to grow up in a small town on the plains among descendants of immigrant homesteaders. The Song of the Lark tells of a young woman, Thea Kronborg, with a talent for music, who as the daughter of a minister finds friendship and approval not among her peers but among older men: a railway brakeman, the town doctor, and a piano teacher. They coach her through childhood and into adulthood, encouraging her to develop her musical abilities.
Cather follows her heroine to Chicago to study with a pianist, who discovers that she has an even greater talent for singing. Eventually, she goes to Germany to train as an operatic singer, and by novel’s end, she has been cast in roles that have her drawing enthusiastic audiences at the Met in New York.
This anthology is not quite the book I expected. Subtitled Short Fiction about Women in the Old West, it leads the reader to expect stories written byThis anthology is not quite the book I expected. Subtitled Short Fiction about Women in the Old West, it leads the reader to expect stories written by women, and a wide selection of them. But besides those writers most easily named (Mary Hallock Foote, Willa Cather, Mari Sandoz, Mary Austin, and Dorothy Johnson), there are almost no women whose fiction would surely qualify them for inclusion here.
To name just a few from the early decades of frontier fiction: Molly Davis, Florence Finch Kelly, Mary Etta Stickney, Frances McElrath, Elizabeth Higgins, Marie Manning, B. M. Bower, Eleanor Gates, Caroline Lockhart, and Kate Boyles.
Instead, the editors find room for one of their own stories (Alter’s “Fool Girl”) and beef up the rest of the book with stories by male writers, which happen to include female characters. These are actually OK, especially Elmer Kelton’s “The Last Indian Fight in Kerr County,” Owen Wister’s “Hank’s Woman,” and Elmore Leonard’s “The Tonto Woman,” but they hardly help showcase the generally under-appreciated work of the many women who have taken pen in hand to tell their own stories of the Old West.
Alter and Row may argue that women writers have left too little to choose from in short form fiction, which is their chosen scope for their anthology. I’d argue that a wide reading of novels would have produced many worthy excerpts from them that would fairly represent the field and reintroduce forgotten writers to a modern audience. That job, alas, has been left to someone else....more
Blue Heaven is a prequel, preceding in time Wyman’s earlier High Country. It introduces in its later chapters a character who is at the center of HighBlue Heaven is a prequel, preceding in time Wyman’s earlier High Country. It introduces in its later chapters a character who is at the center of High Country, and is the link between them. Blue Heaven takes place during the 1910s to 1940s. High Country unfolds in the years that followed.
While Blue Heaven is set in the Swan range north of Missoula in Montana, High Country follows its characters southward to California’s High Sierras. Both novels are about wilderness packers and the mystique of being in the mountains, especially at high elevations, over passes, and along watersheds in hard to access back country.
Unlike much western fiction, Wyman’s novels are not about protagonists engaged in conflict with villainous characters. There are no villains at all. There are people in his stories, but together they make up a community of men and women, chiefly supportive of each other. Wyman somehow manages to hold your interest by creating a cast of uniformly “nice people.”
This is the third in Richard Wheeler’s series about frontier newspaper editor, Sam Flint. We catch him this time arriving in a silver mining settlemenThis is the third in Richard Wheeler’s series about frontier newspaper editor, Sam Flint. We catch him this time arriving in a silver mining settlement in Colorado. He’s been drawn there by a cruel editorial in the town newspaper, The Silver City Democrat, which smugly reported the suicide of a prostitute as a victory for the town’s morally righteous and a blow at the corruptive influence of vice.
Flint discovers that real estate is at a premium in town, and he has to settle for rental space in the very apartment where the prostitute took her life, harassed by the sheriff and his thug deputies, and unable to pay the heavy taxes levied by the town on those deemed undesirable...
It’s been too long since I read The Red Badge of Courage—if I can say that I really read it the first time. (Literature gets wasted on the young.) I rIt’s been too long since I read The Red Badge of Courage—if I can say that I really read it the first time. (Literature gets wasted on the young.) I remember the irony of the novel’s premise, but I have no memory of Stephen Crane’s mastery of style, tone, and narrative flow.
This collection of his western writings, compiled in 1979 for the New American Library, awakened in me both an appreciation for him as a writer and a deep sorrow that his creative life was cut so short, by consumption, at the age of only 28...
Born in Albany, New York, Bret Harte (1836–1902) was not a Californian most of his life as I have long thought. He arrived there in 1853, just after tBorn in Albany, New York, Bret Harte (1836–1902) was not a Californian most of his life as I have long thought. He arrived there in 1853, just after the gold rush, and left again in 1871. While there, he began a writing career, publishing his best-known short stories, “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868) and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” (1869). In later years, he took overseas assignments in the foreign service, and at the end of his life, he was living in England.
Frontier Stories is a collection of seven short stories and novellas, all set in the 1850s –60s, in or not far from San Francisco and the gold fields. The storytelling style owes much to literary predecessors like Robert Louis Stevenson and Walter Scott, who specialized in historical romance with an element of mystery. For me, two stories held the most interest, both of them novella-length...
First published in 1891, this collection of stories challenges beliefs about life on the frontier that persist in the collective imagination still todFirst published in 1891, this collection of stories challenges beliefs about life on the frontier that persist in the collective imagination still today. Set variously in the upper Mississippi Valley and as far west as Dakota, they cast the homesteading farm family in a harsh light robbed of any myth or romance.
While modernization in later years may remove some of the back-breaking labor of working the soil and tending livestock, Garland portrays the grim reality of daily toil for the first generation of homesteaders who settled on the land following the Civil War.
As a writer of popular fiction, Rex Beach hit the ground running with this, his first published novel, set in the gold rush days of Nome, Alaska. Its As a writer of popular fiction, Rex Beach hit the ground running with this, his first published novel, set in the gold rush days of Nome, Alaska. Its story was based on actual events and portrays attempts by crooked lawyers, politicians, and a judge to jump claims of legitimate miners already extracting fortunes from the gold fields.
The central character is Roy Glenister, a young and ambitious man, who has been prospecting for three years with his partner, an older man named Dextry. Their mine, the Midas, is one of the richest in the area. Returning by steamer from Seattle, where they have spent the winter, they learn that their claim is being challenged in court, and until the suit is settled, the Midas is being put in receivership, to be operated by a lawyer, Alec McNamara.
No femme fatale, the “lady doc” of Caroline Lockhart’s novel is by no means attractive, but she is definitely dangerous. Practicing medicine on the frNo femme fatale, the “lady doc” of Caroline Lockhart’s novel is by no means attractive, but she is definitely dangerous. Practicing medicine on the frontier with her only certification from a diploma mill, she is untrained and lacks any ideals usually associated with her chosen profession. She sees it mainly as a source of income. The lives, health, and welfare of her patients are of little concern to her.
We first meet Emma Harpe as she is being run out of a Nebraska town after the death of a patient, for which she faces a malpractice suit. Sometime later, she steps off the train in a Wyoming settlement called Crowheart. Always looking for personal gain, she teams up with a land developer, Andy P. Symes, who is looking for gullible investors in a massive, ill-conceived irrigation project. ..
Brother and sister writing team, Kate and Virgil Boyles, followed their first novel Langford of the Three Bars (1907) with this one, both set on the SBrother and sister writing team, Kate and Virgil Boyles, followed their first novel Langford of the Three Bars (1907) with this one, both set on the South Dakota prairie near the Missouri River. The homesteaders of the title are also a brother and sister, Josephine and Jack Carroll.
It’s the early 1890s, and their story concerns their difficulties as newcomers from the South, invading the open grazing lands of a nearby ranch, the 7-Up, whose foreman, Tom Burrington, takes an interest in them and falls in love with Josephine...
I came across this novel while doing research for my book on early frontier fiction. It joins a long list of novels and stories set in mining camps ofI came across this novel while doing research for my book on early frontier fiction. It joins a long list of novels and stories set in mining camps of the West. Like many of them, it tells a cautionary tale of lives ruined by gold fever and the get-rich-quick mania that drove adventurers for half a century to places like Deadwood, California, and the Klondike...
Alethea Williams’ orphan train novel steers a course between history and romance, while telling a story that explores the subject of gender in the froAlethea Williams’ orphan train novel steers a course between history and romance, while telling a story that explores the subject of gender in the frontier West.
Her central character, Kit Calhoun, is true to stereotype in ways driven in part by the genre and more interestingly by the social expectations of the time. She lacks agency, by being not just female but reared without family in a children’s asylum in New York. There she is the assistant to the asylum’s director, rescuing homeless immigrant children from the streets...
Number two in Richard Wheeler’s series of novels about frontier newspaper editor Sam Flint, this is an unusually dark tale for the author. There are mNumber two in Richard Wheeler’s series of novels about frontier newspaper editor Sam Flint, this is an unusually dark tale for the author. There are moments of harsh realism in the first one, Flint’s Gift, but Wheeler creates a mining community in his second novel so merciless that readers can be tempted to lose faith in the West of honest men and deeds they turn to the western story to reaffirm.
Plot. It’s the summer of 1870, and itinerant editor Flint picks a New Mexico gold mining town, Oro Blanco, to set up shop. He quickly meets the man who will become his nemesis, the town marshal, Crawford. The marshal is not just the law. He is a brutal bully who uses his authority to physically dominate and punish anyone who crosses him. . .
Reading this novel about a 95-year-old woman from a prairie town in Manitoba, I kept thinking of how seldom frontier fiction tells the stories of fronReading this novel about a 95-year-old woman from a prairie town in Manitoba, I kept thinking of how seldom frontier fiction tells the stories of frontier women. The genre has so long relegated them to the sidelines of action-adventure stories about men, it seems not even odd to find them mostly missing from the panoramic narrative of the West.
Hagar Currie in Margaret Laurence’s novel shows what it might have been like to enrich that picture with stories reflecting lives actually lived by women on the frontier. Named for the slave of Abraham and the mother of his son Ishmael in Genesis, Hagar has all the grit and survival instincts of her biblical counterpart. She is as much a feature of the western landscape as any adventuring man who has fetched up there.
This autobiographical novel begins with one of the finest pieces of writing I’ve found in more than 100 books of early frontier fiction. Eleanor GatesThis autobiographical novel begins with one of the finest pieces of writing I’ve found in more than 100 books of early frontier fiction. Eleanor Gates begins her story with the birth of her central character on a remote Dakota homestead during a raging blizzard. The family waits with growing dread the return of the newborn girl’s father, who has ventured into the storm for help.
The man’s remains are not found until the spring thaw, only a short distance from the family’s cabin. Told from the distance of a few childhood years, the girl thinks of her birth as the time she was brought by the stork—which chose the same day to take away her father. The raw realities of frontier life are thus embedded early on in a story of growing up on the prairie...
“Profiles in Courage” would have been a good title for this novel of life in a frontier settlement in Arizona Territory. The title character, Sam Flin“Profiles in Courage” would have been a good title for this novel of life in a frontier settlement in Arizona Territory. The title character, Sam Flint, is a young newspaper editor who sets up his press in little Payday, agreeing to boost the town in the interests of its growth, in return for complete freedom to print all the news he finds fit to print. His editorial encomiums to Payday’s edenic virtues soon bring settlers and new residents. And with them comes a pack of unexpected trouble.
This is an unutterably sad book that I recommend only for readers with strength to learn from what it has to say about identity loss, abandonment, andThis is an unutterably sad book that I recommend only for readers with strength to learn from what it has to say about identity loss, abandonment, and loneliness....more
This is a novel for every reader who wanted Deadwood to go on indefinitely. In The Richest Hill on Earth, Montana writer Richard Wheeler turns his parThis is a novel for every reader who wanted Deadwood to go on indefinitely. In The Richest Hill on Earth, Montana writer Richard Wheeler turns his particular storytelling skills to an account of the copper mining town, Butte, at the turn of the last century. Here there are familiar names: William Andrews Clark and the other copper kings as they dig fabulous fortunes from a mountain slope near the Continental Divide. And there are the many who do the digging, as well as those scratching out a living above ground...
Read my review and interview with the author at my blog....more
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