Rediscover the golden age of the Western with this collection of four
unforgettable novels of honor, adventure, and violence set against the
magnificent landscapes of the American frontier
The heroic exploits and violent struggles of the Old West come alive
once more through this one-of-a-kind collection of four thrilling
novels. Edited by Ron Hansen, this deluxe hardcover edition shows that
the 1940s and 1950s was a golden age for the Western novel.
In the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Ox-Bow Incident, Walter van
Tilburg Clark explores the thin line between civilization and barbarism
through the story of a lynch mob that targets three innocent men,
exposing a dark authoritarian impulse at work the American frontier. Set
in Wyoming in 1889, a time when ranchers and cattle companies waged war
with each other, Jack Schaefer's iconic Shane deploys many of the
genre's most essential elements, brilliantly filtered through a boy's
perceptions. Alan Le May's The Searchers, the basis for John
Ford's cinematic masterpiece starring John Wayne, follows the dogged
quest of two men to rescue a young girl taken prisoner by Comanche
warriors. And Oakley Hall's Warlock, a novel that anticipates the
later books of Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry, casts the battle for
control of a southwestern outpost as a bloody saga pitting a marauding
gang of cowboys and rustlers against the town's defenders, led by the
legendary gunslinger Clay Blaisedell. All four novels were memorably
adapted for the screen, and their gripping stories--told with brisk
narrative energy, psychological depth, and laconic humor--have
contributed unforgettably to the Western's enduring legacy in American
culture.
