I am a bit surprised to find no mention anywhere of this genre, except for Wabbit’s saying that he doesn’t care for it. Well, very few are very good, but a few are as good as anything mainstream. Here are three:
Warlock, by Oakley Hall. Hall has taken bits of history, people who lived and events that really happened, and knitted them into an entertaining and thought-provoking story set in a town called Warlock. He manages to take the reader right into that time and place. Love them, hate them, sometimes laugh at them (but don’t let them hear you laugh—they’re dangerous) his characters are ones we can relate to. Especially Big-Nose Kate.
The Searchers, by Alan LeMay. Much better than the movie based on his book. The book’s characters are real, issues dealt with in depth. Children are kidnapped by tribal Indians, to be raised as Indians or to be sold as slaves, one or the other, no one knows. Family members set out to get them back, one because he loves those children, the other because he hates the Indians.
The Saga of Billy The Kid, by Walter Noble Burns. Not Hollywood stuff or pulp fiction, but history probably as accurate as it can be, written as a novel. Follows William Bonney’s career from age twelve when in New York he stabs to death a man for insulting his mother, through apprenticeship in petty outlawry and his role in Arizona’s Lincoln County War, to his murder by his one-time companion Pat Garret. Gripping story, from beginning to end. Reader can see where many of those Hollywood clichés came from, crooked sheriff ruling the town with his gang of thugs, etc. What rich history, of not so long ago. One scene has Bonney peeping through the window of Governor Lew Wallace late one night (Governor has offered him amnesty if he gives himself up, but is a Governor to be trusted?). Wallace is at his desk, writing. The book invites us to speculate that he might have been writing Ben Hur. In the midst of history unfolding, one of its protagonists spying on him from a few feet away, maybe contemplating killing him, he is writing an historical novel.
P.S. and let's not forget Larry McMurtry.
Warlock, by Oakley Hall. Hall has taken bits of history, people who lived and events that really happened, and knitted them into an entertaining and thought-provoking story set in a town called Warlock. He manages to take the reader right into that time and place. Love them, hate them, sometimes laugh at them (but don’t let them hear you laugh—they’re dangerous) his characters are ones we can relate to. Especially Big-Nose Kate.
The Searchers, by Alan LeMay. Much better than the movie based on his book. The book’s characters are real, issues dealt with in depth. Children are kidnapped by tribal Indians, to be raised as Indians or to be sold as slaves, one or the other, no one knows. Family members set out to get them back, one because he loves those children, the other because he hates the Indians.
The Saga of Billy The Kid, by Walter Noble Burns. Not Hollywood stuff or pulp fiction, but history probably as accurate as it can be, written as a novel. Follows William Bonney’s career from age twelve when in New York he stabs to death a man for insulting his mother, through apprenticeship in petty outlawry and his role in Arizona’s Lincoln County War, to his murder by his one-time companion Pat Garret. Gripping story, from beginning to end. Reader can see where many of those Hollywood clichés came from, crooked sheriff ruling the town with his gang of thugs, etc. What rich history, of not so long ago. One scene has Bonney peeping through the window of Governor Lew Wallace late one night (Governor has offered him amnesty if he gives himself up, but is a Governor to be trusted?). Wallace is at his desk, writing. The book invites us to speculate that he might have been writing Ben Hur. In the midst of history unfolding, one of its protagonists spying on him from a few feet away, maybe contemplating killing him, he is writing an historical novel.
P.S. and let's not forget Larry McMurtry.
