Chasing the Sun: A Reader's Guide to Novels Set in the American West

Edward Joseph Beverly

Sunstone Press, 2008 - Fiction - 497 pages

The American West is a land that has inspired novelists since the early 1800s. Western fiction covers a vast geographic, cultural, and thematic landscape and includes the real cowboy narrative of Will James, the formula Westerns of Max Brand and Frank Gruber, the romantic novels of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour, the Navajo mysteries of Tony Hillerman, the ethnic novels of Louise Erdrich, the contemporary novels of Edward Abbey, and the genuine literature of Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner. "Chasing the Sun" is a reader's guide with over 1,350 entries, including 59 reviews of the author's personal favorites. It is organized around content--exploration, trapping, wagon trains, the Indian Wars, contemporary fiction, and so on. Each chapter, or category, has an introduction, a reader's guide that provides capsule summaries of the literature from some of the earliest novels to current publications, and reviews of one or more novels in that category. The guide is for general readers who like their fiction set in the American West, and it will also provide a ready source for researchers, reviewers and students interested in a particular type of novel set in the West, for example, the decimation of the buffalo herds. It is ideal for those readers who would like to compare novels with the same general subject by different writers, and those who would like a taste of the quality and diversity of the literature through the reviews. It should also help teachers identify books notable enough to add to a syllabus.

Contents

• Preface: 11
• Wagons West: 37
• The Army in the West and the Indian Wars: 50
• Lawmen Gunfighters Outlaws and Frontier Justice: 78
• Ranching and Trail Drives: 113
• The Hunters: 156
• The Native Americans: 169
• The Church in the West: 196
• Settling the West: 210
• Gold Silver Oil Timber and Lost Treasures: 229
• People Freight and Mail: 250
• The Civil War in the West: 266
• The Spanish West: 279
• Alaska and Western Canada: 304
• The Romantic West: 317
• Rodeos and Wild West Shows: 360
• Livestock Dogs Predators and Game: 369
• The Contemporary West: 378
• Western Sagas: 414
• Western Mysteries: 430
• Unusual Western Themes: 453
• Selected Bibliography: 469
• Index By Author: 489

Popular passages

Page 37 - ... our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.

Page 28 - P from the edge of the prairie and over the range rode three. Their buckskin was black with blood and shiny from much wiping of greasy knives and nearly all the fringes had been cut off their pants for thongs. Hair hung thick and dirty to their shoulders. Traps rattled in rucksacks behind their Spanish saddles and across the pommel each carried a long Hawkins rifle of shining brassbound steel and battered wooden stock.

Page 27 - ... and concealed themselves in the woods. The Minnetarees, however, pursued and attacked them, killed four men, as many women, and a number of boys; and made prisoners of four other boys, and all the females, of whom Sacajawea was one: she does not, however, show any distress at these recollections, nor any joy at the prospect of being restored to her country; for she seems to possess the folly or the philosophy of not suffering her feelings to extend beyond the anxiety of having plenty to eat and...

About the author

Edward Joseph Beverly is a retired military officer, has lived all over the American West--Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nebraska, Alaska--and currently resides in California. He is an avid collector and student of the literature of the American West. Prior to his military career, he was a surveyor with the Army Corps of Engineers. In the Air Force he served as a combat crew navigator, electronic warfare officer, drone pilot, and acquisition program director. Lieutenant Colonel Beverly served two tours in Vietnam and following his military service he worked in the aerospace industry as a program manager, marketing manager, and consultant. He has graduate degrees from Central Michigan University, University of Southern California, and California State University--the latter in English Literature. He is also the author of the novel "Return to Beauty," from Sunstone Press.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Chasing the Sun: A Reader's Guide to Novels Set in the American West
• Author: Edward Joseph Beverly
• Publisher: Sunstone Press, 2008
• ISBN: 0865346038, 9780865346031
• Length: 497 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Westerns; Literary Criticism / Reference; Reference / Bibliographies & Indexes