Westward the Women: An Anthology of Western Stories by Women edited by Vicki Piekarski

 

She compared it all to her Indiana home. She saw the cool porch, the shade trees. She wanted to see the rolling lawns of the chief citizen. She missed the small church bickering and the news and gossip of the Ladies Aid. Baldwin made light of the rivalry of neighbors over the parlor sets and crayon portraits. He despised the jealousies of the “folks back home.” He even laughed at her charities “across the tracks,” calling them inadequate, and he never could be dragged to a bazaar. Meda doted on these pastimes. She delighted in the slumming among what Baldwin termed “the unwashed.” She felt she had lost her husband in this desert of soapweed. He believed in the somnolent hills; he was a part of their simplicity, their strength. She thought resentfully of his frank enjoyment of their isolation.—Mari Sandoz, The Vine

Knowledgeable editor Vicki Piekarski has offered us one dozen tales penned by women to expose us to the breadth and depth of the distaff side of the Western.

She has done us a favor.

They range from the melancholic tale such as Mari Sandoz’s The Vine, to the somewhat comic as in a tale from B.M. Bower, and a fanciful tale of the devil in a brief but thoughtful story from Helen Eustis titled Mister Death and the Red-Headed Woman.

As per usual in anthologies, some tales land more than others, but the quality here is quite high overall. She and her partner Jon Tuska have both done astonishing jobs in keeping the Western relevant for those willing to dig for their work.

Another extract.

We heard about them long before we saw them. News traveled fast in those days even though we didn't have telephones in the valley. Old Gus, the mailman, gave us the full report. “They come in from Laramie in a two-wheeled cart,” he said, “him ridin’ with her walkin’ beside the cart and the old sway-bellied to horse pullin’ it. That cart was mostly filled with plants, and she was carrying one in her arms, just like most women carry a baby.—Peggy Simson Curry, Geranium House

And another extracted from a non-fiction pioneer memoir by Juanita Brooks titled Quicksand and Cactus.

So sitting astride my dappled pony, my bonnet on my shoulders, my braids undone, I study this out and determined that I would see some of the world beyond the desert, that I would go to a college or university or whatever it was that one went to in order to learn of books, and how to talk like books. I would not wait for life to come to me; I would go out to meet it.

High marks for a fine volume by a knowledgeable editor.

Easy A.