The Real Western Canon

Larry McMurtry, the preeminent chronicler of the American West, celebrates the best of contemporary Western short fiction, introducing a stellar collection of twenty stories that represent, in various ways, the coming-of-age of the legendary American frontier.

Featuring a veritable Who's Who of the century's most distinctive writers, this collection effectively departs from the standard superstars of the Western genre. McMurtry has chosen a refreshing range of work that, when taken as a whole, depicts the evolution and maturation of Western writing over several decades. The featured tales are not so concerned with the American West of history and geography as they are with the American West of the imagination -- one that is alternately comic, gritty, individual, searing, and complex.

Contributors
Wallace Stegner * Dave Hickey * Dao Strom * Dagoberto Gilb * William Hauptman * Jack Kerouac * Ron Hansen * Diana Ossana * Robert Boswell * Tom McGuane Louise Erdrich * Max Apple * Mark Jude Poirier * Rick Bass * Jon Billman * Richard Ford * Raymond Carver * Annie Proulx * Leslie Marmon Silko * William H. Gass

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - BUT the man's almost dead. The words stung John Hare's fainting spirit into life. He opened his eyes. The desert still stretched before him, the appalling thing that had overpowered him with its deceiving purple distance. Near by stood a sombre group of men. Leave him here, said one, addressing a gray-bearded giant. "He's the fellow sent into southern Utah to spy out the cattle thieves. He's all but dead. Dene's out-laws are after him. Don't cross Dene." The stately answer might have come from a Scottish Covenanter or a follower of Cromwell. Martin Cole, I will not go a hair's-breadth out of my way for Dene or any other man. You forget your religion. I see my duty to God.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - Joan Randle reined in her horse on the crest of the cedar ridge, and with remorse and dread beginning to knock at her heart she gazed before her at the wild and looming mountain range. Jim wasn't fooling me, she said. "He meant it. He's going straight for the border ... Oh, why did I taunt him " It was indeed a wild place, that southern border of Idaho, and that year was to see the ushering in of the wildest time probably ever known in the West. The rush for gold had peopled California with a horde of lawless men of every kind and class. And the vigilantes and then the rich strikes in Idaho had caused a reflux of that dark tide of humanity. Strange tales of blood and gold drifted into the camps, and prospectors and hunters met with many unknown men.

This Novel will capture your heart and mind as you begin this pilgrimage with Red (Fingers) Bolton. He left his high desert homeland in pursuit on the drifters that had killed his family. His journey led him far into the Northwest Territory of Oregon. This action packed western thriller is a love story between a young man and his beautiful devoted wife who experience extreme dramatic events early in 1874.

A thrill-a minute ride set in the days of Spanish colonialism in California, where thugs and greedy tyrants try to wrest every penny from peasants . . . and the one hero who defends the common man is the mysterious masked stranger who calls himself Zorro--The Fox The first Zorro story appeared as a 5-part serial in All-Story Weekly, a famous American pulp fiction magazine, starting in the August 9, 1919 issue. In a case of fortunate timing, Douglas Fairbanks, the silent movie star, was in the process of trying to change his image at the time, and he chose Zorro as his next starring role. In 1920, when the romantic swashbuckler debuted, it set movie box office records. Riot police had to disperse the huge crowds that showed up at the New York opening. Zorro entered the public consciousness and is now a part of popular culture, the same as such heroes as Superman, Tarzan, and The Lone Ranger. The rest is history.

Jane Withersteen gazed down the wide purple slope with dreamy and troubled eyes. A rider had just left her and it was his message that held her thoughtful and almost sad, awaiting the churchmen who were coming to resent and attack her right to befriend a Gentile. She wondered if the unrest and strife that had lately come to the little village of Cottonwoods was to in-volve her. And then she sighed, remembering that her father had founded this remotest border settlement of southern Utah and that he had left it to her. She owned all the ground and many of the cottages. Withersteen House was hers, and the great ranch, with its thousands of cattle, and the swiftest horses of the sage. To her belonged Amber Spring, the water which gave verdure and beauty to the village and made living possible on that wild purple upland waste. She could not escape being involved by whatever befell Cottonwoods.

Viet Nam, the hippie movement, Roe v. Wade, inflation, OPEC crisis, Watergate...the perceived loss of America's innocence provides the national stage for Into the Second Springtime. Meet Wesley Gallagher, a precocious young man who is prone to making mischief and scheming shenanigans. You'll laugh at Wesley's perceptions of the world and fall in love with the strong and steady influences in his life. With stormy issues facing the nation, you'll cheer at the bright beacons of light guiding Wesley, quietly instilling values that create a healthy and substantial anchor in this tender coming-of-age novel. Written with unpretentious messages of charity, forgiveness, hope, humor, love and respect, you will cheer Hurrah! for America again.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - A FACE haunted Cameron - a woman's face. It was there in the white heart of the dying campfire; it hung in the shadows that hovered over the flickering light; it drifted in the darkness beyond. This hour, when the day had closed and the lonely desert night set in with its dead silence, was one in which Cameron's mind was thronged with memories of a time long past - of a home back in Peoria, of a woman he had wronged and lost, and loved too late. He was a prospector for gold, a hunter of solitude, a lover of the drear, rock-ribbed infinitude, because he wanted to be alone to remember. A sound disturbed Cameron's reflections. He bent his head listening. A soft wind fanned the paling embers, blew sparks and white ashes and thin smoke away into the enshrouding circle of blackness. His burro did not appear to be moving about. The quiet split to the cry of a coyote. It rose strange, wild, mournful - not the howl of a prowling upland beast baying the campfire or barking at a lonely prospector, but the wail of a wolf, full-voiced, crying out the meaning of the desert and the night.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - What subtle strange message had come to her out of the West? Carley Burch laid the letter in her lap and gazed dreamily through the window. It was a day typical of early April in New York, rather cold and gray, with steely sunlight. Spring breathed in the air, but the women passing along Fifty-seventh Street wore furs and wraps. She heard the distant clatter of an L train and then the hum of a motor car. A hurdy-gurdy jarred into the interval of quiet. Glenn has been gone over a year, she mused, "three months over a year-and of all his strange letters this seems the strangest yet." She lived again, for the thousandth time, the last moments she had spent with him. It had been on New-Year's Eve, 1918. They had called upon friends who were staying at the McAlpin, in a suite on the twenty-first floor overlooking Broadway. And when the last quarter hour of that eventful and tragic year began slowly to pass with the low swell of whistles and bells, Carley's friends had discreetly left her alone with her lover, at the open window, to watch and hear the old year out, the new year in. Glenn Kilbourne had returned from France early that fall, shell-shocked and gassed, and otherwise incapacitated for service in the army-a wreck of his former sterling self and in many unaccountable ways a stranger to her. Cold, silent, haunted by something, he had made her miserable with his aloofness. But as the bells began to ring out the year that had been his ruin Glenn had drawn her close, tenderly, passionately, and yet strangely, too.

JJ Byrider was taken by surprise when his cattle were rusteled and most of his crew killed in the process but he recovered and carried on but when Bert Haskins, an old enemy, beat and raped the woman JJ intended to marry, anger built up in him and exploded like steam bursting from a locomotive releaf valve. A vengence trail took him across the state of Texas to a showdown.

The residents of Three Corners, Texas are in shock to realize that, even in the time following the Civil War, their quiet town is a lawless place. They are threatened by the news of a gang of desperados who have slaughtered a group of innocent people from another state.

The townspeople know that they may be next, and so they enlist the help of Elias Trace, a man battle-tested from the Civil War. Even though he's seen enough blood to last a lifetime, he knows he must do whatever he can to prevent violence from coming to the town where he's come to live a peaceful life.

Likewise, Elias shudders to think of any harm being done to the beautiful Emma Mann, who recently became a widow. Meanwhile, Emma finds herself battling the feelings she feels for the newcomer.

If he wants to protect Emma and the town, Elias must lead a militia of ranch hands, young boys and women against a band of outlaws. There can only be one outcome in "From Hell to Breakfast,"