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A poignant final chapter for McMurtry’s Duane

2009-12-31T18:55:16Z

Review by Deborah Donovan
The fifth novel in what was originally thought by critics to be a trilogy, Rhino Ranch appears to be Larry McMurtry's last foray into the small and dying town of Thalia, Texas.

It all began with The Last Picture Show (1966), in which Duane Moore and his buddies were lovesick teenagers, and Thalia was enjoying prosperity from the oil boom years. In Texasville, the sequel, the town wealth has dissipated with the oversupply of oil, and Duane has gone from a millionaire to an almost-broke father of four incorrigible offspring, and is dealing with midlife crisis in all its many guises.

A Wild West Heroine Reborn

2009-12-03T15:26:19Z

Review by Arlene McKanic
Readers who've seen the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid will remember Katherine Ross' portrayal of Etta Place, Robert Redford's pretty girlfriend. The real Etta Place turns out to be even more intriguing, for no one knows much about her-not even whether she was really Sundance's girlfriend. In his rollicking debut novel, Gerald Kolpan imagines the life of this mystery woman, placing her in a time and place filled with colorful characters.

Dave Robicheaux goes West

2009-07-18T22:38:43Z

Review by Leslie Budewitz
Katrina's floodwaters have receded, and Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel have gone to western Montana for an extended fishing trip. No surprise, except perhaps to them, that they find themselves both fishermen and bait.

Teammates in Arms

2009-03-14T20:13:14Z

Interview and Review by Alden Mudge
Since the publication of his beautiful memoir of growing up in Montana, The House of Sky (1979), Ivan Doig has been hailed as a great Western writer.

That reputation was burnished by the publication of his marvelous Montana trilogy, English Creek (1984), Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987) and Ride With Me, Mariah Montana (1990), which masterfully portrays the lives of four generations of the McCaskill family in Two Medicine country, Doig's lovingly invented landscape near the Rockies in Montana.

Go West, Young Women

2009-02-01T05:09:02Z

Review by Christie Ridgway
Dorothy Garlock's Leaving Whiskey Bend is a compelling turn-of-the-century Western that blends three women's struggles to survive with a ranching family's lingering mystery.

A Kansas Girl with Hollywood Dreams

2008-11-30T17:57:50Z

Review by Deborah Donovan
Erin McGraw has made her mark with short stories peopled by quirky yet thoroughly believable characters caught up in the vagaries of familial relationships. In The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard, her second novel, McGraw has taken the skeleton of her own grandmother's story and turned it into a frank and engaging depiction of one young woman's attempt to reinvent herself.

No Country for Young Widows

2008-11-08T22:14:38Z

Review by Kristy Kiernan
In 1903, the wilds of Montana and Alberta, Canada, and the frozen peaks of the Rockies challenged the most adventurous and experienced explorers. Only someone desperate, perhaps even mad, would dare consider them a viable escape route, but then Mary Boulton, most often referred to in Gil Adamson's suspenseful debut, The Outlander, as "the widow," is surely both.

Wallace Stegner and the American West

2008-10-20T17:17:00Z

Review by Allison Hood
Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental journalist Philip Fradkin (Stagecoach; A River No More) trains his literary eye on the physical, emotional and intellectual landscapes of iconic Western writer Wallace Stegner in a new biography, Wallace Stegner and the American West. A well-executed biography often utilizes a specific angle colloquial to its subject's life and endeavors: Here Fradkin works a favorite Stegner literary device, synecdoche, as a pivotal conceit.