Westerns Books

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

Jim Fergus

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 267 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

What a horrible book!!! 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This subject had such promise! Unfortunately the author turned it into a Harlequin Romance bodice ripper novel about exploited, misunderstood white women who could only find understanding by "volunteering" to become the wives of a Native American chief who was hoping to broker a cross cultural understanding by "marrying" his family to white women.He perpetuates every stereotype of native americans and the sexual motives of women that have come down through time. Shame on you!! This could have been a fantastic historical novel. I am sorely disappointed!! You have done a disservice to everyone involved.

Editorial Review:

One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man's world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime. Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

Cormac McCarthy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 318 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Difficult and Troubling Masterpiece 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Blood Meridian is a masterpiece, which like Moby Dick and Ulysses requires considerable effort from the reader. On the other hand, McCarthy is an easier read than Melville or Joyce, and his book is more accessible emotionally. The elaborate symbolism and language of the book is a PhD's wet dream, but for the more casual reader the important thing is whether after all the effort that goes into slogging through a book like this, the author can connect on a gut emotional level. McCarthy succeeds in this most important respect.

"Blood Meridian" refers to the red, north-south meridian defined by the Western sunset, as McCarthy's rather obvious subtitle reveals. But in a larger sense it refers to the geographic and temporal frontier of the old West. One crosses the north/south meridian that runs through Texas of 1848 and in the process crosses into the bloody frontier of our historical memory -- including, as McCarthy's epigraph reveals, a history of indiscriminate bloodshed and scalping that defined human civilization for the past 300,000 years. For McCarthy, the recent "civilization" brought to the frontier over the past 150 years is a paper-thin moment in time. We are not really far removed from the blood meridian, and much of our seeming civilization is sheer hypocrisy and self-deception.

As the body count piles up in chapter after vivid chapter, the reader strips away the veneer of civilization and overcomes the cultural taboos that prevent us from seeing humans as road kill. Our skull and brains really are only marginally less fragile than a watermelon, and human civilization and action hangs on the ridiculously thin threads that run down the central nervous system. The ethical codes against killing and violence are also paper thin, and in the frontier, the killing is as indiscriminate as the practices of army ants and wolf packs. The species kills and is killed, and is distinguished only by the imaginativeness of the act.

The most striking character of the book is not the nominal protagonist, the "Kid" who helps to pile up the body count, but the figure of the "Judge" who is second in command of the paramilitary band of scalpers the Kid joins. The Judge says he is the legal representative of Glanton, the band's leader. But his procilivity for blowing brains out, molesting children, and his ridiculous denials of Glanton's atrocities combine to make him a distinctly different kind of jurist. But then, the Judge can deliver speeches and cite precedents in a mesmerizing way. For me, the Judge captures all the hypocrisies and self-deceptions of our current civilization.

It is not at all clear whether McCarthy sees some redemption for the species. Is there some redemption at the end of all this violence? The Kid stops killing. The maniacal fear-flight defense and blood lust that motivate the violence is put on hold when the Kid declines to kill the Judge or the Judge's "Fool" companion. The Kid comes in from the frontier, and for the next 20 years obeys the rules of civilization, with the exception of one justified act of self defense. But the ambiguous end of the novel seems to indicate that the Judge has killed or perhaps even raped the Kid -- and he ends by dancing and exclaiming "I can never die."

I find the ending of the book to be one of its important flaws. It is simply not clear what the Judge does at the end, nor is it clear just what McCarthy is trying to convey. Nor is the one-page epilogue helpful. Perhaps he has not worked out for himself the fundamental question of whether there is any hope of redemption for the species. I'm of a more optimistic bent, and find some promise in how the Kid seems to come to terms with himself after returning from the Blood Meridian.

This is one of a handful of truly great American novels.

Editorial Review:

"The men as they rode turned black in the sun from the blood on their clothes and their faces and then paled slowly in the rising dust until they assumed once more the color of the land through which they passed." If what we call "horror" can be seen as including any literature that has dark, horrific subject matter, then Blood Meridian is, in this reviewer's estimation, the best horror novel ever written. It's a perverse, picaresque Western about bounty hunters for Indian scalps near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s--a ragged caravan of indiscriminate killers led by an unforgettable human monster called "The Judge." Imagine the imagery of Sam Peckinpah and Heironymus Bosch as written by William Faulkner, and you'll have just an inkling of this novel's power. From the opening scenes about a 14-year-old Tennessee boy who joins the band of hunters to the extraordinary, mythic ending, this is an American classic about extreme violence.

All the Pretty Horses

Cormac Mccarthy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 302 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A compelling story that sacrifices some of its insight, in favor of action and adventure 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I really enjoyed this novel, although it's probably more highly praised than it deserves to be. You can tell its serious literature because of the general lack of punctuation and unconventional composition. McCarthy's writing style is likely to be off-putting to some, but there is a lot to like about this novel. While novels that are branded (rightly or wrongly) as works of serious literature generally have something to say, they often don't have a story to tell. This is something that I really appreciate about McCarthy as an author. There are issues and themes that he clearly wants to explore in his fiction, but he builds his novels (at least the one's I've read) on the foundation of a compelling story.

Ultimately, the theme of this novel reminded me a lot of No Country for Old Men. From my perspective, both novels are essentially about how the world (or at least the Country) is changing and how futile it can be for one man to resist it. In All the Pretty Horses, John Grady Cole romanticizes the cowboy era, a way of life that is fading away, like the setting sun. He stubbornly refuses to compromise his world view, speaking plainly and honestly, doing what he feels is right no matter what the cost, and standing up for what he believes in. Needless to say, this kind of integrity comes with a price and Cole, and his companions suffer greatly for these choices.

McCarthy's prose is at times stark, at times gorgeously realized. Descriptions of the harsh land and vivid sunsets are, at times, quite astonishing. But it is the dialogue in this novel that is especially sharp and insightful. McCarthy draws obvious contrasts between the straight-forward words of John Grady Cole and characters who engage him in philosophical discussions, speaking with eloquence and manipulating language. Some of the best dialogue occurs between Cole and the great aunt of the girl he loves. These passages are worth reading again and again.

I do have a few complaints though. One definite shortcoming is the romance in the story. The character of Alejandra is superficial at best and the entire romance feels a little too contrived. My other complaint might sound strange but I found the action in the final pages of the novel, while compelling, actually held the novel back a little. In the end, the action takes over the final pages of the novel and reflection on the larger issues and themes become secondary. While the pages turn quickly as Cole engages in shootouts and a race across the Mexican badlands, the strength of this novel comes in subtler forms; in the dialogue and ruminations about fate and religion. It's as if the novel abruptly switches gears. While on some level I enjoyed the pacing at the end, I was left with a sense that much of the story's potential had been sacrificed.

McCarthy is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. All the Pretty Horses is not a perfect novel, and perhaps not worthy of all the aclaim it has received, but its well worth reading. 4 1/2 stars.

Editorial Review:

Part bildungsroman, part horse opera, part meditation on courage and loyalty, this beautifully crafted novel won the National Book Award in 1992. The plot is simple enough. John Grady Cole, a 16-year-old dispossessed Texan, crosses the Rio Grande into Mexico in 1949, accompanied by his pal Lacey Rawlins. The two precocious horsemen pick up a sidekick--a laughable but deadly marksman named Jimmy Blevins--encounter various adventures on their way south and finally arrive at a paradisiacal hacienda where Cole falls into an ill-fated romance. Readers familiar with McCarthy's Faulknerian prose will find the writing more restrained than in Suttree and Blood Meridian. Newcomers will be mesmerized by the tragic tale of John Grady Cole's coming of age.

The Shopkeeper

James D. Best

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Wonderful Gift! 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 14 people found this review helpful.

I chose this book because of the reviews as a gift for an avid Western reader who doesn't troll online or frequent bookstores because of an illness. He received this wonderful gift last Wednesday and finished it on his second day LOVING IT and wanting another "Steve Dancy" book NOW. He'll have to wait for Christmas it appears but thank you James D. Best for a fabulous new character and wonderfully written book from someone who loves his (quality) Westerns. You have brightened someone's days who needed some brightening! His daughter is jealous that SHE didn't give it to him. So, well done Mr. Best... Keep writing!!

Editorial Review:

In 1879, Steve Dancy sells his New York shop and ventures west to explore and write a journal about his adventures. Though he's not looking for trouble, Dancy's infatuation with another man's wife soon embroils him in a deadly feud with Sean Washburn, a Nevada silver baron.

Infuriated by the outrages of two hired thugs, the shopkeeper kills both men in an impulsive street fight. Dancy believes this barbarian act has closed the episode. He is wrong. He has interfered with Washburn's ambitions, and this is something the mining tycoon will not allow.

Pinkertons, hired assassins, and aggrieved bystanders escalate the feud until it pulls in all the moneyed interests and power brokers in Nevada. Can the former city slicker settle accounts without losing his life in the process?

These is my Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 (P.S.)

Nancy Turner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 216 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Woman's issues 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

These is My Words is filled with wild west high adventure. It is fast paced and reminds me of watching an action movie. Sarah grows from not understanding what is love. How it is demonstrated etc... to a profound understanding of a healthy marriage relationship. Filled with woman's issues: child bearing & rearing, pregnancy, marriage, courage, strength, meekness, life and death. A woman's classic.

Editorial Review:

A moving, exciting, and heartfelt American saga inspired by the author's own family memoirs, these words belong to Sarah Prine, a woman of spirit and fire who forges a full and remarkable existence in a harsh, unfamiliar frontier. Scrupulously recording her steps down the path Providence has set her upon—from child to determined young adult to loving mother—she shares the turbulent events, both joyous and tragic, that molded her, and recalls the enduring love with cavalry officer Captain Jack Elliot that gave her strength and purpose.

Rich in authentic everyday details and alive with truly unforgettable characters, These Is My Words brilliantly brings a vanished world to breathtaking life again.

Resolution

Robert B. Parker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The New York Times–bestselling author’s richly imagined work of historical fiction: a powerful tale of the Old West from the acknowledged master of crime fiction.

I had an eight-gauge shotgun that I’d taken with me when I left Wells Fargo. It didn’t take too long for things to develop. I sat in the tall lookout chair in the back of the saloon with the shotgun in my lap for two peaceful nights. On my third night it was different. I could almost smell trouble beginning to cook . . . .”

After the bloody confrontation in Appaloosa, Everett Hitch heads into the afternoon sun and ends up in Resolution, an Old West town so new the dust has yet to settle. It’s the kind of town that doesn’t have much in the way of commerce, except for a handful of saloons and some houses of ill repute. Hitch takes a job as lookout at Amos Wolfson’s Blackfoot Saloon and quickly establishes his position as protector of the ladies who work the backrooms—as well as a man unafraid to stand up to the enforcer sent down from the O’Malley copper mine.

Though Hitch makes short work of hired gun Koy Wickman, tensions continue to mount, so that even the self-assured Hitch is relieved by the arrival in town of his friend Virgil Cole. When greedy mine owner Eamon O’Malley threatens the loose coalition of local ranchers and starts buying up Resolution’s few businesses, Hitch and Cole find themselves in the middle of a makeshift war between O’Malley’s men and the ranchers. In a place where law and order don’t exist, Hitch and Cole must make their own, guided by their sense of duty, honor, and friendship.

The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 6: The Crime Stories (v. 6)

Louis L'Amour

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

One of America’s most beloved storytellers, Louis L’Amour’s vibrant tales of adventure bring the American West to life. Now, in this sixth volume of collected short stories, L’Amour takes us beyond the frontier with thirty-three gripping stories of crime, sports, and the murky world where the two often meet. From suspenseful whodunits to rueful tales of fortunes gained and lost, this remarkable collection will enthrall and entertain L’Amour fans old and new.
Traversing a vivid landscape, from sunblasted hills and canyons to the nighttime streets of America’s greatest cities, some of Louis L’Amour’s most compelling fiction was set in his own time—whether in the naked electric glare of boxing rings where men go head-to-head with their dreams and demons in an underworld rife with corruption, or along freight docks where laborers toil to earn just enough to get by, or in the penthouses of the rich and arrogant who calculate the odds of how to get even more. Here are tales of innocents caught in the schemes of criminals, detectives hunting down truths that hide more lies, gamblers and beauties, wiseguys and cops. Here is a world populated by the kinds of people who risk their lives to right a wrong, make a buck, or save a friend.

A war veteran makes a journey to visit the man who saved his life in Korea. Instead he uncovers a killing and finds his own heroic cause…. Confronted with an easy chance to steal, an honest man gives in to temptation—and finds himself ensnared in a web of blackmail and violence…. An elderly Hawaiian seafarer is found dead with a hand-carved figure beside his body. Unraveling his murder will mean solving the mystery of a shipwreck—and of the forces that drive some to take fatal chances and others to kill.

Brimming with thought-provoking characters and situations—from a man who awakens from unconsciousness to find a fortune in a burning house to a man who meets a killer who is supposed to be dead in a seedy diner—these thrilling, atmospheric stories course with authenticity and bear the mark of a timeless master.

Appaloosa

Robert B. Parker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 71 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Interesting read, but not outstanding 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I have read a lot of the reviews for this book and they range from outstanding, to nothing special. I have to agree with both sides.

I went and saw the movie when it came out and was extremly impressed. I had to buy the book to see where Ed Harris drew this amazing story. Needless to say, I was somewhat disapointed.

This book is very, let me repeate that, VERY simplistic. It reads closly to what I would imagine a screenplay would. It does create an interesting flavor with the strong silent type of narrative in Everett Hitch's voice, but really if I didn't have the movie itself in mind it would have only been a mediocre novel at best.

Buy it only if you are a fan of the author or want another look at the movie.

The Western Returns! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

"Appaloosa" Reminds you of those Saturday Matinees with Randolph Scott shooting it out with the bad guys in the Saloon and the Good Guy gets the girl. Yet it's not all black and white. The good guys have flaws as well, it makes them human.

Parker puts good and bad on a western canvas colored with frailty.

Editorial Review:

In one of Parker's finest, two gunmen arrive in the lawless town of Appaloosa where the actions of a renegade rancher have already taken their toll.

The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1: The Frontier Stories

Louis L'Amour

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Louis L'Amour at his best 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

An excellent introduction to one of the greatest American storytellers. A very good gift to anyone who admires American Western courage, independence, and sense of honor.

Editorial Review:

With more than 120 titles still in print, Louis L'Amour is recognized the world over as one of the most prolific and popular American authors in history. Though he met with phenomenal success in every genre he tried, the form that put him on the map was the short story. Now this great writer – who The Wall Street Journal recently compared with Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson – will receive his due as a great storyteller. This volume kicks off a series that will, when complete, anthologize all of L'Amour’s short fiction, volume by handsome volume.

Here, in Volume One, is a treasure-trove of 35 frontier tales for his millions of fans and for those who have yet to discover L'Amour’s thrilling prose – and his vital role in capturing the spirit of the Old West for generations to come.

Heart of Texas, Vol. 1: Lonesome Cowboy / Texas Two-Step

Debbie Macomber

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Heart of Texas Vol. 1 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I love all of the Heart of Texas novels. If you love cowboys and cowboy stories, you will love this one. I love the fiesty female characters!

Debbie's Macomber's BOOKS TEXAS series 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I have not found a Debbie Macomber book that I didn't like yet. She writes about old town living and the close friendship that those towns have to offer, each book is full of characters who bring help and change into each other lives. SHE writes with such ease, it is a pleasure reading them!

Joyce

Heart of Texas, Vol. 1 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Since Debbie Macomber is one of my favorite authors, I thoroughly enjoyed her writing style and various stories within the book. I felt like I truly got to know her wonderful, interesting and unique cast of Texas characters. I'm looking forward to reading Volumes 2 and 3.

Editorial Review:

Lonesome Cowboy
Savannah Weston lives quietly on the family ranch with her brother, Grady. Until a stranger named Laredo Smith comes along -- a disenchanted cowboy who just might change Savannah's life!

Texas Two-Step
After her father's death, Ellie Frasier takes over the feed store in Promise. Still in mourning, she turns to her friends for comfort. But now her long-standing relationship with one of those friends -- rancher Glen Patterson -- seems to be turning into something else . . .