Westerns
I have a wide definition of a “western” as a work of fiction. James Fenimore Cooper’s last Leatherstocking novel, The Prairie (1827), is a Western in even a modern sense of the category. The Dime Western of the post-Civil War period, and the sensational “yellow” Westerns that overlapped the end of the wars with the American Indians of the West created and strengthened the stereotypes and conventions that later generations of writers had to deal with.
What is important and interesting, however, is that those later generations of writers are good, sometimes great. From Zane Grey (Ohio-born) to Louis L’Amour, A.B. Guthrie to Larry McMurtry, Dorothy Johnson to Paulette Giles, Elmer Kelton to Elmore Leonard, Thomas McGuane to Edward Abbey to N. Scott Momaday - so many writers have faced and continue to face the West and its history and its landscape.
I have a Westerns section in the store in the far frontier of the North Room, but I have other Westerns scattered in different areas, outposts in other literatures. I will work to gather them on this page, an ongoing building of community. Audiobooks of Western writers, including Zane Grey and A.B. Guthrie, Jr., are listed on my Audiobooks - Fiction, Poetry, Drama page.
A note on Louis L’Amour’s books: they are listed in alphabetical order by title with the exception of the 17-volume Sacketts titles, which are clustered at the end and numbered according the rough chronology L’Amour intended (it was flexible by his intention and unfinished at his death).
Listed here alphabetically by author.
The Last Trail
The Last Trail
Set in the Ohio Valley during the late 1700s, this thrilling novel unfolds in the wilderness of the era, when small settlements sprang up near military forts. Skirmishes between settlers and Indians were frequent, and bordermen like Jonathan Zane patrolled the region to protect pioneers. Zane's already tumultuous life takes an unexpected turn with the arrival at Fort Henry of Helen Sheppard, who creates a stir with her youth and beauty. Helen's abduction by a band of renegades and hostile Native Americans leads Zane to his last trail — he'll either rescue Helen and settle down with her, or he'll die trying.
Zane Grey, best known as the author of Riders of the Purple Sage, drew inspiration from the experiences of his pioneer ancestors during the Revolutionary War period. His tranquil images of natural beauty and action-packed sequences of chases and conflicts combine for a tale that crackles with adventure and romance.
Being set from a standard Grosset & Dunlop edition