SURPRISE!

For many years, Jeff Streeby and I have maintained a convivial, if distant, relationship and we correspond from time to time. Among other things, he is author of a remarkable collection of prose and poetry, Sunday Creek, a look at an Old West town from an engaging variety of viewpoints. He also taught English language and literature at high schools and universities, and has been honored with several prestigious awards and other recognition. Jeff is also Senior Associate Editor for OJAL Arts Incorporated, and manages its prominent publication, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters, or O:JA&L for short.

The high-toned Journal features a wide range of poetry and prose, as well as the poets and writers who create it. They also publish a “Masters Series” of chapbooks featuring  a selected author, their work, and other material. Jeff offered me the shocking opportunity to be featured in the Masters Series. The result is a 52-page chapbook under the Journal’s Dally Post Press imprint, Saddle Work: The Art & Practice of Cowboy Poetry. The book features a handful of my poems, including some heretofore unseen, an essay on cowboy poetry, and an interview in which I attempt to provide rational answers to Jeff’s probing questions. I can’t remember the last time I had to think so hard.

The O:JA&L website is featuring one of the new poems, “Give That Cowboy a Hand,” (with more to come) as well as the entirety of Saddle Work: The Art & Practice of Cowboy Poetry. Click on the links and take a look. Being included in the Masters Series is an honor—and a big surprise.

Tune in.

Writer Rod Miller goes live on “Dusty Trails and Tall Tales” Thursday, July 23, at 5:00 p.m. Mountain Time. Tune in on YouTube Livestream or FacebookLivestream for a discussion about the infamous Massacre at Bear River. See you there.

In the news:

The paperback and eBook editions of This Thy Brother have just been released. The stories follow the Pate and Lewis families introduced in Father unto Many Sons, and while reading that one first may enhance enjoyment of This Thy Brother, each novel stands on its own as well. From expeditions to kidnap and enslave Navajos, to the Texas invasion of New Mexico, to building trade and ranching empires, the book covers a lot of country. Online booksellers and eBook outlets feature the new release. These links will take you there:

This Thy Brother paperback on sale now
v  Amazon US
v  Barnes & Noble

 This Thy Brother eBook on sale now 
v  Amazon US
v  Apple Books
v  Barnes & Noble
v  Google Play
v  Kobo Books 

As Flame to Smoke, meant to be released a few weeks ago, suffered a printing error so has been delayed. For unknown reasons, the printers put out the fire in the title on the book’s cover, and rather than bright yellow and orange flames it looks like black and gray ashes. The publisher tells me they are working on a fix, but have not informed me of a completion date. Amazon does say they have the book in stock, but they do not show a cover image so I don’t know if it’s the defective one or the correct one. 

 

Fire up your computer (or phone or wherever you watch podcasts) on July 23 at 5:00 p.m. Mountain Time and log onto “Dusty Trails and Tall Tales.” I will be talking with host Matthew Pizzolotto about the Massacre at Bear River, and it should be an interesting discussion. The United States Army killed more Indians (Shoshoni in this case) than at any other engagement in the history of the West, yet the 1863 massacre is largely forgotten to history. In this interview, we hope to shed a little more light on the tragedy and give it a measure of the attention it deserves.

That’s the news for now.

and the winner is . . .

Western Fictioneers, formed by professional writers in 2010 “to preserve, honor, and promote traditional Western writing in the 21st century,” just announced the winners of the annual Peacemaker Awards.

Lo and behold, my book Where the Long Trail Ends was named Best Western Novel.

Sometimes you get lucky. I am pleased and surprised in equal measure.

In other award news, two of my works were named finalists for Western Writers of America Spur Awards. “Leftovers,” from my collection Buckoffs and Broken Barriers: Rodeo Poems, is a Spur Award Finalist for Best Western Poem. “Rawhide Robinson Faces Fear,” from the collection of short stories with Michael Norman, Shiny Spurs and Gold Medallions, is a Spur Awards Finalist for Best Western Short Fiction.

Good news from the premier professional organizations for Western writers.

When it rains it pours. Thank goodness—out here in the West we can use the water.

My favorite book, Part 32

For years, Wendell Berry has been one of my favorite writers. He is versatile, penning poems, essays, nonfiction, short stories, and novels. I like all of it. But perhaps my favorite of his works is Watch With Me: and Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch.

The stories are set in Berry’s fictional community of Port William, Kentucky. He has written several novels and lots of short stories about the place and its people, set from just after the Civil War till now, and their relationships to one another and the land.

Watch With Me: and Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch, stars Ptolemy “Tol” Proudfoot and Miss Minnie, who, later in life than is usual, become husband and wife. They are an unlikely pair—he an oversized and disheveled farmer whose slow and easy ways fool people into believing he is a bit dim upstairs, while she is a diminutive, prim and proper schoolmarm who is sharp as a tack. As their relationship develops over—roughly—the first half of the twentieth century, they learn to accommodate and appreciate one another’s ways and make a happy marriage.

Much of what the book recounts about Tol and Miss Minnie is humorous—some of it laugh-out-loud funny. There’s an incident in a country store featuring Tol and a basket of eggs that is one of the most amusing stories I have ever read or heard. In true Wendell Berry fashion, the book presents country folk as complex, layered characters rather than the hicks and bumpkins we so often see.

Wendell Berry’s writing has earned him the distinction of numerous literary prizes and honors, including receipt of the National Humanities Medal in 2010 and the Life Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle in 2016. In addition to a busy writing life, Berry practiced the old ways of agriculture he often writes about, farming with mule teams and raising crops on land where he and his wife still live. His way of writing is likewise old-fashioned—every one of the millions of his published words was written in longhand on paper with a pencil. You would be hard-pressed to find any author who has done more or better with the benefit of all the modern conveniences.

If you don’t know Wendell Berry, it’s time you met. Watch With Me: and Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch would make a fine introduction.

Who killed Lily?

The building of the Central Pacific toward Promontory Summit in Utah Territory and the completion of the transcontinental railroad was accompanied by a string of mostly temporary towns known collectively and individually as “Hell on Wheels.” Two Finger Pete tended bar at O’Sullivan’s Saloon in those towns. At Corinne, the last of the Hell on Wheels towns, he partnered up to build the Promontory Saloon, a more prominent establishment in a city with big plans.

But one morning a body was discovered in an upstairs room—the murdered, mutilated body of a young woman.

Who killed Lily?

The town marshal, the county sheriff, and deputy United States marshal Porter Rockwell work together and apart and sometimes at odds to find the killer. With little evidence, questionable clues, several suspects, multiple motives, doubtful alibis, and unexpected complications, unraveling the riddle proves a challenge.

Who killed Lily?

Can you solve the crime before the lawmen do? As Flame to Smoke is scheduled for release in a large-print edition from Thorndike Press in early June. Reserve a copy today at Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online booksellers.

Who killed Lily? It’s a mystery.

The West is dead.

Not long ago I read a book titled Paper Talk. It is a collection of dozens of illustrated letters and other odds and ends by the late, great Western artist Charles M. Russell, edited and with commentary by Brian Dippie. Included in the collection is the above drawing and verse Russell inscribed in a book for a friend. It reads:

The west is dead my friend
But writers hold the seed
And what they sow
Will live and grow
Again to those who read.
—C.M. Russell, 1917

I like the short poem for a couple of reasons. There is Russell’s declaration that the West is dead. He made that statement in 1917, but he was not the first (nor would he be the last) to voice the sentiment. The West has died on numerous occasions, beginning in the nineteenth century. It died when the great trail drives out of Texas ended. It died with the end of the open range era and the invention of barbed wire fences. It died when the influence of women tamed the wild and violent towns. It died when historian Frederick Jackson Turner mourned the closing of the American frontier in 1890, and with it the westward movement that created the unique American character. And the West has continued to die, over and over again ever since, with the homestead act, with the regulation of public lands grazing, and you name it. The West is dead.

But the truth of it is, the West has never died. It has evolved and changed just as the North, South, East, and all the other points on the compass have adapted over the years, and will continue to do so. Still, through it all, the West managed to maintain much of its character as it aged.

And at least some of the reason for the truth that the West lives on is credited in Russell’s claim that writers “hold the seed.” The so-called Westerns created by writers—whether stories, poems, songs, radio plays, movies, television, histories, biographies—have also been declared dead on more occasions than anyone can remember. But Western writing is as prone to survival as the West that inspires it. It carries on and continues to “live and grow / Again to those who read.”

The West is dead. Long live the West.

Thank you for making it so, whether you are a Western writer or Western reader.