Eisenhower Public Library Staff Picks: Westerns

"In this true Western classic Jack Schaefer tells the story of a mysterious stranger who finds himself in the Wyoming Territory joining local homesteaders in their fight to keep their land and avoid the intimidating tactics of cattle driver Luke Fletcher. While trying to leave his gunslinging days behind him, the mysterious stranger, Shane, is tested by Fletcher and his men. In Shane, Schaefer executes a perfect Western narrative while exploring the...

"The Pulitzer Prize­winning American classic of the American West that follows two aging Texas Rangers embarking on one last adventure. An epic of the frontier, Lonesome Dove is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America. Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written,...

Based on incidents that took place in the southwestern United States and Mexico around 1850, this novel chronicles the crimes of a band of desperados, with a particular focus on one, "the kid," a boy of fourteen. An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place...

The story of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two cowboys who share a small tent while working as herders and camp tenders during a summer spent on a range far above the tree line. They fall into a relationship that at first seems solely sexual but then reveals itself to be something more. Both men marry and have families, but over the course of many years and frequent separations they find their relationship becomes the most important thing in both...

A girl on a horse is involved in a car accident, loses a leg and the horse goes mad. As she won't allow him to be destroyed, her mother, a New York magazine editor, quits job and husband and takes horse and daughter to a rancher in Montana, said to cure horses by talking to them. Despite cultural differences--she is British--love blooms between editor and rancher.