Tuesday, August 2, 2022

Top Ten Tuesday: Go West, Young(ish) Woman! Go West!


This week's Top Ten Tuesday prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is "Books Set In a Place I’d Love to Visit," and can be about real or fictional places.  I'm choosing to focus on all books set in the Old West because I would LOVE to take a time-travel trip back to the Old West and experience it for myself, at least for a little while.  I'd probably want to return to a world of antibiotics and clean drinking water after a while, rather than live there forever, but a visit to any of these books?  Yes, please!


So, here are my ten favorite novels set in the Old West.  All titles are linked to my reviews, unless I haven't reviewed that book yet.  Yes, one selection is a trilogy, but it didn't seem fair to have only one of the books here, or have the books take up three slots, so I put them all together.


1. Shane by Jack Schaefer -- A lone gunman befriends a struggling family and saves a town, but at great cost.

2. Borden Chantry by Louis L'Amour -- An amateur lawman solves a series of killings to protect his town.


3. The Knights of Tin and Lead trilogy by Emily Hayse (These War-Torn Hands, The Beautiful Ones, In the Glorious Fields) -- The King Arthur legend retold as gently magical westerns.


4. The Light of Western Stars by Zane Grey -- A woman goes west and figures out who she really is inside while experiencing a series of adventures and meeting a variety of interesting characters.

5. True Grit by Charles Portis -- A teenage girl insists on accompanying a U. S. Marshal on the quest to bring her father's murderer to justice.


6. The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley -- A dashing aristocrat fights injustice and tyranny from behind two different disguises.

7. Sixteen Brides by Stephanie Grace Whitson -- Sixteen women go west to claim their own homesteads, start businesses, and/or get married.

8. Hondo by Louis L'Amour -- A Cavalry scout physically saves a family on a remote homestead, and they save him emotionally.


9. The Virginian by Owen Wister -- A frontier school teacher tries really hard not to fall in love with a nameless hero who saves her from a series of mishaps and disasters and calamities.

10. A Sidekick's Tale by Elisabeth Grace Foley -- A young woman tries to save her family's ranch by entering into a marriage of convenience, but comic mishaps keep derailing her plans.

12 comments:

  1. Wow, you’re brave!

    I’m going to assume that it would be okay to bring medication from our world on the journey as I have a couple of them that I really need to take on specific schedules for health reasons. If that was allowed, I’d love to see the old west for a little while, too. :)

    My post: https://lydiaschoch.com/top-ten-tuesday-books-set-in-a-place-id-love-to-visit/

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    1. Lydia, well, I have been researching this era for the past twenty-some years and I feel like I could handle it ;-) But I would probably like to tuck a bottle of Allegra in my pocket, and maybe some Tylenol too.

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  2. I'd love to live in the Western Territory, hanging out with Emily's characters. <333

    I put a hold on Sixteen Brides at the library!

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    1. Eva, yeah, especially if I could hang out around a certain sharpshooter by the name of Selby...

      I hope you find Sixteen Brides to be as fun as I do!

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  3. I love reading books set in the Old West, but I wouldn't want to visit there! I'm really not the roughin' it type! Ha ha.

    Happy TTT!

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    1. Susan, that is totally fair! I love mysteries, but I wouldn't want to live inside one ;-)

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  4. I like how you rounded up all your books to cover one place. Great idea! I think I'd like to travel back to the Old West, too -- to the time of homesteading; but like you, I don't know if I'd cut it. LOL! I thought I'd see Letters of a Woman Homesteader on your list. And the only one I've started to read was The Virginian, and I need to finish it.

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    1. Thanks, Ruth! It was a fun way to play with the prompt.

      I focused this list on novels, so that's why Letters wasn't here. Maybe I can do a list of nonfiction set in the Old West one day!

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  5. I had no idea Shane the movie was based on a book - might have to check that out!

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  6. I doubt I would survive in the Old West, but it would be interesting to visit for a day! I like the sound of A Sidekick's Tale :)

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    1. Rose, A Sidekick's Tale is really fun! I often recommend it.

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