A drummer, selling books on the fringes of civilization, stumbles upon a cabin in a fierce snowstorm, occupied by a lone woman with insatiable appetites — one of the tales in Fourteen Western Stories, available on Amazon for the Kindle and for free Kindle reading apps, which work on almost all computers and portable devices. Free to borrow for Kindle owners enrolled in Amazon Prime.
Also available in a toasty-warm paperback edition:
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Thanks to a friend’s recommendation and some excerpts he posted online, I decided to take a look at Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. It turned out to be astonishing — I couldn’t put it down. The narrative skills of the original (anonymous) poet and Heaney’s dynamic modern-English verse combine to make for a thrilling read. The work is well over a thousand years old and it’s still a page-turner.
Very Enjoyable Reading
Who says the short story is dead? I gave this collection of fourteen stories a try, although I hadn’t read any “western” fiction since Lonesome Dove. Mr. Fonvielle does the genre proud with realism, stark situations and conflict, and endings that often are not what you’d expect. His characters often speak in crisp Victorian language that reminded me of several John Wayne movies. In fact, I think the dialogue is my favorite part of the collection. But don’t misunderstand: he depicts frontier living with its lawlessness, whores, brutality, saloons, scalpings, and the rest, so it’s not for the fainthearted. The stories vary in length from just 2-3 pages up to 20-30. I was disappointed when I got to the end. Give it a look.
An Amazon customer review which you can see here.
An Irish lieutenant on a cavalry post in Kansas runs up against the unspoken rules of frontier army life — one of the tales in Fourteen Western Stories, available on Amazon for the Kindle and for free Kindle reading apps, which work on almost all computers and portable devices. Free to borrow for Kindle owners enrolled in Amazon Prime.
Also available in an elegant paperback edition:
Click on the image to enlarge.
Lately I’ve been reading, with great delight and admiration, Frederick Law Olmsted’s A Journey Through Texas, which records a journey he and his brother took through The Lone Star State in 1857.
Olmsted is best known today as the co-designer, with Calvert Vaux, of Central Park in New York City, but he was fine writer, who took several journeys through the slave states before The Civil War in order to report on conditions there to the rest of the country. Olmsted disliked slavery and found its effects on white Southern society pernicious, but he was not a zealot on the subject, content to report coolly on what he saw, both good and bad.
His book about his journey through Texas is one of the great works on the frontier West, filled with clear, richly detailed descriptions of the landscape and the people, including transcribed snippets of conversations engaged in or overheard along the way, and fascinating observations on modes of travel, habitations and foodstuffs. The brothers traveled mostly by horse, and slept under canvas whenever possible.
One interesting fact Olmsted reports is that from western Louisiana throughout most of Texas the travelers could rarely find any food anywhere except cornbread and fried pork, usually served with coffee. This was served at all meals, in the humblest cabin they sought refuge in from time to time and in the dining room of the best hotel in the state capital of Austin (which was something of a hovel.)
Fresh butter was almost unheard of, as was wheat bread, and even wheat flour could rarely be had at any price. Most of the time they could vary the standard fare of “pone and fry” only by shooting their own game along the trails.
Inspired by this bit of information, I have decided to try and live on cornbread and bacon for a week or so, to see what it would be like. I decided as well to make my own cornbread, in an iron skillet, as it was usually made on the frontier. Here’s the first batch, based on a recipe in The Joy Of Cooking, which came out exceptionally well:
There would have been endless variations on cornbread eaten on the frontier — it was a universal food among whites, Latinos and Indians. I plan to try several variations myself — including a classic “corn pone” recipe which, unlike the Joy Of Cooking rule, uses only corn meal, no flour, no baking powder and no sugar. (A pone, as Olmsted used the word, was just a round of cornbread made in a skillet. Today, “corn pone” describes the specific type of cornbread made without baking soda, and goes by many other names, like johnny cake.)
The prospect of a diet of cornbread and bacon for a week or so is not entirely unpleasant to me — and I expect it will take me back to the American frontier in a way no other research can.
I’ll be providing cornbread and corn pone recipes in later posts.
A new Amazon customer review of Fourteen Western Stories:
This is truly a western read. It is just as wild as the west goes on paper. I especially loved the first story. WOW. What an aim straight for the heart. Worth the purchase.
Available on Amazon for the Kindle and for free Kindle reading apps, which work on almost all computers and portable devices. Free to borrow for Kindle owners enrolled in Amazon Prime.
Also available in a paperback edition!
This book collects the first seven Tales Of the Saturni — short stories of unspeakable, macabre doings, usually in the vicinity of New Orleans. I’d bought all the stories individually as Kindle editions and loved them, so I was thrilled to get this paperback collection of the tales as a Christmas present.
The stories are wonderfully entertaining and often deeply disturbing, as good horror fiction should be, and they begin to chart a mythology of terror which will eventually expand in a series of novels. These seven tales are a good way to enter this mythology — but be prepared! They get under your skin and may disturb your sleep!
You can buy the paperback for $6.00 here:
There is also a Kindle edition available for a mere 99 cents!
A story of love lost and love redeemed on the Tex-Mex border — one of the tales in Fourteen Western Stories, available on Amazon for the Kindle and for free Kindle reading apps, which work on almost all computers and portable devices. Free to borrow for Kindle owners enrolled in Amazon Prime.
Also available in a paperback edition:
Click on the images to enlarge.
A famous U. S. Marshal from Wyoming arrives in town to serve a warrant on an out-of-control 17 year-old kid — one of the tales in Fourteen Western Stories, available on Amazon for the Kindle and for free Kindle reading apps, which work on almost all computers and portable devices. Free to borrow for Kindle owners enrolled in Amazon Prime.
Also available in a thrilling paperback edition:
Click on the images to enlarge.
The gift of a Navy Colt holds the key to the death of the colonel’s lady — one of the tales in Fourteen Western Stories, available on Amazon for the Kindle and for free Kindle reading apps, which work on almost all computers and portable devices. Free to borrow for Kindle owners enrolled in Amazon Prime.
Also available in a three-dimensional paperback edition:
A sharp-eyed whore recounts the story of Mysterious Dave, a lethal lunatic who drifts into Wichita in the Fall, when things are supposed to be quiet — one of the tales in Fourteen Western Stories, available on Amazon for the Kindle and for free Kindle reading apps, which work on almost all computers and portable devices.
Also available in an attractive and affordable paperback edition:
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This is a rest area in Texas Canyon, Arizona — on the road to El Paso.
Below is a Whataburger purchased in El Paso:
The Whataburger is the best fast-food burger known to mankind but only available in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, as far as I’ve been able to determine. The one I’m eating in the picture is generously garnished with jalapeños. Whataburger — since 1950, like me.
One of the tales in my book Fourteen Western Stories is set in El Paso, in the days before Whataburgers.
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