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.

Ghost Eater by Frederick Highland

 

“So where does that leave us?” I asked miserably.

“There’s a little cove I know of, north of Malacca, where a man might find some friends.”

“Contrabanders and pirates, you mean.”

The Irishman pulled his head back in. His voice was hard. “A pirate, you might know, is a poor man with the gall to act like a rich one.”

This novel follows a Civil War Naval veteran escaping a past by venturing to the South Seas where he winds up on an unusual paddleboat voyage up a jungle river.

The novel plays as an historical adventure mixed with a quest with dreamlike overtones and a dash of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness thrown in for good measure.

The dreamlike qualities touched on here and there kept this reader at a bit of a remove from the action.

What I enjoyed most were the concrete touches. The concocted relationship with Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-discoverer of evolution, the nautical lore and the threat of what is to be found in the unknown jungle ahead.

Well-written if a bit too ornate in its dreaminess at times; it’s as if the author were “dressing up” a straight adventure novel with a reach for a bit more.

I can’t fault him for that; many fine storytellers [Talbot Mundy comes to mind immediately] traipse into the mystical to ornament their tales.

It is merely my taste speaking here that finds these phantastic additions to remove me from the story.

If your taste for the fantastic old school adventure is high, you may have a fine time in front of you.

Shadow Prey by John Sandford

 

Because it occurred in the midst of the American Civil War, you don’t hear much about it, compared to the later Indian Wars in the West. The Sioux Uprising in Minnesota, however, may have been the deadliest of them all.

There were at least 447 deaths among white settlers, and probably more that weren't documented, almost twice as many as in the Custer fight. The number of Sioux casualties is unknown, but directly and indirectly, was very large. During the hostilities, captured Indians were held in a concentration camp less than a mile from what is now Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, in the heart of the Twin Cities, and like later concentration camps, it was a place of terror, rape, and death.

After the uprising, Mankato, Minnesota, became the scene of the largest mass execution in American history, when 38 Sioux were hanged in a single drop from a huge scaffold, with the approval of President Lincoln.

This novel, the second in Sandford’s long-running Lucas Davenport police-procedural series, was based on a series of articles he and fellow reporter Nick Coleman did for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

I am an unabashed Sandford fan [along with Bernard Cornwell who sings his praises] and was looking forward to this novel that deals with some 20^th-century vengeance for the 1867 Sioux Uprising.

Sandford’s story is, as usual, brisk. The procedure seems right but…there is far more “soap opera” elements within than I am used to from this usually streamlined craftsman.

While not a bad novel by any stretch, with an intriguing subject at that—I found this to be the least of all my Sandford reads—a rare “Feel free to skip this one” is issued.

A skilled storyteller at the beginning of his game.

The Wrath of God by Jack Higgins

 

The chief of police usually managed to execute somebody round about noon on most days of the week, just to encourage the rest of the population, which gives a fair idea of how things were in that part of Mexico at the time.

That is the opening line of Jack Higgins’ 1971 novel.

If you recognize the name, yes, that Jack Higgins, of The Eagle Has Landed and other such uber-British stiff-upper-lipped adventure fare.

For the record, I’ve read and enjoyed immensely The Eagle Has Landed and Storm Warning but found his later work to fall off a bit. But what was solid, was solid.

This novel is his only stab at a Western. A western set in the Mexican Revolution. Rife with dust, sweat, venal authorities and half-venal antiheroes.

This novel plays like a lost Sergio Leone or Robert Aldrich Western.

One can easily imagine a ‘70s era Lee Marvin, Richard Harris, Rod Steiger and Fernando Lamas eating these chewy characters alive.

This is a solid, briskly paced testosterone fueled adventure filled with fine imagery.

I regret Mr. Higgins did not write more in the genre, but I will salve myself by delving deeper into his earlier work.

If anything I stated here is your cuppa, then you’re in for a fine afternoon.

Enjoy!

Cowboy Slang by Edgar “Frosty” Potter

 

He had callouses from pattin’ his own back.

The subtitle of this book is “Colorful Cowboy Sayings”; a compendium of, well, that.

We get 123 pages of single space “witticisms” such as “Plain as the hump on a camel” or “Dished up soup made out of dirty socks.”

This volume seems more composed than an accumulation of research.

If one reads Ramon F. Adams’ The Cowboy Dictionary or Win Blevins’ Dictionary of the American West you will find very little [if any] crossover from Potter’s book with either of these more scholarly books.

That is not to say scholarly makes all things better, but Adams and Blevins give us authenticity. They culled from original sources to give us words and sayings as they actually existed in the “wild.” We get a feel for the humor and wit of the men and women of that day.

Mr. Potter’s work feels more like, “Oh, I thought of another good one, I’ll write that one down.”

It feels more yarnspinning’ than truth. More Twain truth-stretching than reportorial accurate.

The problem is, as with the examples offered, none of these manufactures are particularly clever or memorable.

If one needs a feel for authenticity for one’s own tale-spinnin’ or would simply like a homespun chuckle, well, frankly there’s better fare than this.

I admire all who put pen to paper to make a mark in the world; perhaps this would have fared better with me if it wasn’t offered as truth.

Instead of truth one is served a plate of whimsical “I don’t think so.”

The Winter Family by Clifford Jackman

 

High summer night in Oklahoma. Warm winds that smelled of apple blossoms. Now and then a lightning bug winked on and drifted through the air. Quentin Ross caught one in his fist and held it there, with its radiance leaking between his fingers and reflecting in his shallow eyes. For a moment he rolled the lightning bug between his thumb and forefinger, and then he crushed it, smearing himself with its luminescence, and he smiled, wide and empty.

That opening passage lets you know that we are outside the bounds of the formulary Western; we are sojourning in the squalid landscape of many an uber-violent neo-Western.

Admittedly, this is a brand of the genre I can enjoy a good bit.

This 2015 Western crosses the border into McCarthy’s Blood Meridin territory, where also resides James Carlos Blake’s superb In the Rogue Blood and S. Craig Zahler’s also transgressively enjoyable Congregation of Jackals.

All of the titles mentioned have been reviewed on these pages, quite favorably.

The trouble is, this novel is so reminiscent of those without quite reaching that balancing tone of high art and rough violence that with each brief chapter I would continually think of the comparison novels.

While there is nothing wrong with this novel, there may be information in the fact that this reader continued to think of other novels while reading this one.

It strikes me as an unfair review on my part and my failing in that I could never quite settle into the dark territories Mr. Jackman had to offer without thinking about former trips into this territory that I enjoyed.

The dilemma of being on vacation while thoughts of past enjoyable vacations persistently intrude.

Make of this what you will.

Saddle Tramp by Todhunter Ballard

 

Shamus McGee was happy. There had been few days during his twenty-three years when he had not been happy. He was a big man and when people made fun of his good nature he grinned.

“I'm too big to be nasty,” he told them. “If I went around hunting up trouble people would call me a bully. And if I refused to fight they'd call me a coward. Way it is, I like everyone, so I never have cause to battle.”

This 1957 novel from Mr. Ballard gives us the trope of the big amiable man who’d rather not fight but…as one would assume, he gets pushed a bit to far and even mild pots sometimes simmer and boil over.

This is fine serviceable entertainment in the “Destry” vein. It may be formulaic, but I found it to be more successful than the highly regarded Destry Rides Again by Max Brand. I think that good reputation is more from the film than from the source  novel, but that’s just me, what do I know?

While no classic, it’s head-and-shoulders over all the “Solid-jawed” heroes who boil from the go.

A fine afternoon whilin’.