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.

"The Light of Western Stars" by Zane Grey (again)

Yup, this is now officially a favorite western novel for me.

Now, the funny thing is, the first time I read this book, I got really mad at the ending because I seem to have missed one very key sentence toward the end.  (SPOILERS in the rest of this paragraph only.)  And I still think that a showdown between Gene Stewart and Don Carlos is called for, and I'm mad that we didn't get one.  BUT.  Grey does tell us that Don Carlos got captured and thrown in jail.  He's not left on the loose, waiting to ambush Stewart and Madeline on their way home.  (End of SPOILERS.)

I learned recently that Grey wrote a sequel to this, called Majesty's Rancho.  When I was at the Zane Grey Museum in Zanesville, Ohio, last week, I picked up gorgeous vintage 1940s editions of both books, and promptly started rereading this.  I've watched the 1940 movie version several times since the first time I read the book, so I wanted to get the book back in my head before reading the sequel.  Which I hope/plan to read this summer still, after I finish up a few other things I am currently reading.  I'm really excited to see where Stewart and Madeline's lives take them!  Fingers crossed that it's a happy book and not full of them getting angry at each other over misunderstandings all the time, or something lame like that.

In this book, Madeline "Majesty" Hammond comes west to visit her brother and runs afoul of drunken cowboy Gene Stewart before she's even left the train station.  What ensues?  Only a secret and unconsummated marriage, a lot of dramatic scenery, really crazy car driving, a Mexican revolution, and a rugged camping trip just to add some spice.

Parts of this book kind of demand the readers leave modern sensibilities behind, but that's not something I personally have difficulty doing because I read a LOT of old books, and I know enough about history to understand when things are a product of the era they were written in, and when they're something I'm just not going to be okay with no matter what.  If you can't do that without it ruining your enjoyment of this book, you probably aren't going to like it.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for western violence and a little bad language here and there.

"The Light of Western Stars" by Zane Grey

I really liked this book a lot.  Until the final page.  I found it unusual and rather thrilling, and I enjoyed it greatly.  Until that last page, where Grey disappointed me so soundly I'll probably never read this again.

Before I go into why I was disappointed, I'll briefly outline the story.  Madeline Hammond comes west to find her brother.  She's exceedingly wealthy.  She falls in love with the west, buys a ranch, and sets about making a really cool home for herself.  And there's a cowboy named Gene Stewart who kind of goes from crude to awesome to crude to awesome with some regularity.  Madeline is drawn to him, he's drawn to her, and everything points to them having some kind of very tumultuous life together for many years, if they can ever just get together once and for all.  Also, there's an evil bad guy named Don Carlos who hates both of them with the fire of a thousand suns because... that's what bad guys do.  I was always a little unclear on just why he hated them so much, but I figured it'd all come perfectly clear at the end, when he and Gene Stewart had a glorious showdown of some sort, and Don Carlos was finished for good.

Except that's not what happened.  And even if, instead of a glorious showdown, Don Carlos had just gotten thrown in jail for being a stinker, I'd have been fine with that.  But that didn't happen, either.  In fact, nothing at all happened to Don Carlos.  He didn't even get apprehended.  He is still out there.  Any minute, he can pop back up out of the blue and menace Madeline and Stewart again!  This is all wrong, people!  It isn't right, it isn't fair!

I feel like Zane Grey was so excited over the very last line of the book (which was good) that he just forgot all about Don Carlos.  I also feel quite certain that, in the very next instant after that last line, Don Carlos pops out from behind a rock and shoots Gene Stewart.  And I will never know because Zane Grey left me hanging for all eternity.  Mutter mutter mutter.

Particularly Good Bits:

She scarcely remembered when she had found it necessary to control her emotions.  There had been no trouble, no excitement, no unpleasantness in her life.  it had been ordered for her -- tranquil, luxurious, brilliant, varied, yet always the same.

It was only by looking back that Madeline could grasp the true relation of things; she could not be deceived by the distance she had covered.

Once more, for the hundredth time, the man's reliability struck Madeline.  He was a doer of things.

...sarcastic as alkali water...

Heedless, desperate, she cast off the last remnant of self-control, turned from the old proud, pale, cold, self-contained ghost of herself to face this strange, strong, passionate woman.

If This Was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for western violence and a sprinkling of bad language.

This is my 18th book read and reviewed for The Classics Club.

"Riders of the Purple Sage" by Zane Grey

I thought I had read this before, but now I don't think I ever had.  Which is silly, because it's one of the most famous western books.  I'm glad I finally got to it!

Jane Withersteen is a wealthy Mormon woman whose expansive ranch is the biggest spread anywhere near the Utah town of Cottonwoods.  She refuses to stop seeing a "gentile" named Bern Venters and marry a Mormon, and the leaders of the town decide to punish her and Venters for this.  Into the fray steps a stranger named Lassiter whose reputation as a Mormon-hater and -killer is known throughout Utah.  He saves Venters' life, then champions Jane Withersteen through everything her enemies can devise as they try to force her into submission.  

This is not exactly an anti-Mormon book -- while the antagonists are all Mormons and use their religion as the reason behind their actions, Jane Withersteen is also a Mormon and relies on her faith to see her through.  I don't know a great deal about Mormonism, just what I learned in catechism class years ago, and what I've picked up here and there since then.  So I don't know how accurate any of this is to the history of Utah and such.  But Mormonism is a big part of the book, and mostly it's not shown in a good light, but as an excuse to basically be thieves and murderers.  Just so you know.

This book hit a lot of sweet spots for me:  secret identities, vengeance and avengers, lonesome heroes, spirited heroines, love that crosses boundaries, and (of course) cowboys and the Old West.  It also has some spectacular descriptions -- Grey creates a vivid world that's almost too fantastic to believe, full of vibrant colors and amazing landscapes.  Nothing is dull or flat or ordinary here -- even the landscape is epic.

I think I could be good friend with Jane Withersteen.  At the very beginning of the book, the narrator tells us that she "wished only to go on doing good and being happy" (p. 4).  That reminds me a lot of me.  She's also stubborn and secretive, but kind and generous.  I like her a lot.

And Lassiter -- my goodness, he's precisely the sort of hero I love.  A loner with a mission of vengeance, dressed all in black, with a lightning draw and a deadly aim, but with "a quaint grace and courtesy that came to him in rare moments" (p. 245).  Yum, yum, yum.

So yeah, very glad I picked this up at the library and have now read it at long last.  I suspect this will become one I reread now and then.


First Sentence:

A sharp clip-clop of iron-shod hoofs deadened and died away, and clouds of yellow dust drifted from under the cottonwoods out over the sage (p. 3).


Particularly Good Bits:

Venters looked out upon the beautiful valley -- beautiful now as never before -- mystic in its transparent, luminous gloom, weird in the quivering, golden haze of lightning.  The dark spruces were tipped with glimmering lights; the aspens bent low in the winds, as waves in a tempest at sea; the forest of oaks tossed wildly and shone with gleams of fire (p. 157-158).

So, with his passion to kill still keen and unabated, Venters lived out that ride, and drank a rider's sage-sweet cup of wildness to the dregs (p. 203).


If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for violence and some language.

"The Ranger and Other Stories" by Zane Grey

And just when you were beginning to think all I read anymore are Jane Austen knock-offs and Sherlock Holmes stories, right?

It's been years and years since I read a western.  Why?  I have no idea.  I love watching westerns, love writing them... so why don't I read more of them?  That's something I intend to change.

This is a collection of four novellas, each of them delightful.  I grabbed it off the shelf at the library, not knowing anything other than the title and author, as it's been rebound and I was being dragged bodily toward the children's section.  But I figured, "Hey, can't go wrong with Zane Grey, right?"

Right!

"The Ranger" concerns a Texas Ranger who's fallen in love with a coquettish Mexican-American girl much younger than he is.  She gets kidnapped, he's the Ranger who has to go after her, and lots of excitement ensues.

"Canyon Walls" features a cowboy on the lam after getting into trouble with the law.  He winds up at a ranch run by a Mormon woman and her daughter -- they take him on as a ranch hand, the ranch prospers, and he falls in love with the daughter despite his initial determination not to.

"Avalanche" is about a young man and his adopted brother who have a big quarrel over a girl and then wind up facing almost certain death when an avalanche seals them into a canyon for the winter.

"From Missouri" involves a young schoolteacher who comes to a ranch where all the cowboys -- and the ranch's owner -- all vie for her attention, as does a troublemaker from a nearby ranch.

You might be noticing a theme here, one that rather surprised me:  falling in love!  The first three are told from perspective of the male characters, but the fourth switches back and forth a bit.  And while they all have an exciting bit here and there, only "The Ranger" involves any kind of gunplay.  "Canyon Walls" has no violence at all, but the other two have fist fights.  Not what I particularly expected, I guess.

But don't let that make you think these stories are boring.  I spent the first three stories convinced throughout them that there was not way they could end well, but fervently hoping they would.  I'm hoping to re-read a couple of these before I take it back to the library to see if I can figure out how Grey wound the tension that tight, but yet set up a satisfying ending for each.

Particularly Good Bits:

He reflected that if he were blamed for the Green Valley affair, also, which was not improbable, he might find himself already an outlaw, whether he personally agreed or not.  ("Canyon Walls," p. 54)

Even so, Jake felt a monstrous hand at the back of him, propelling him toward something that he had gladly and sternly willed, yet against which at odd moments his soul revolted.  ("Avalanche," p. 136)

If this was a movie, I would rate it:  PG for mild violence.

I'll leave you with this song, which the story "The Ranger" reminded me of: