WESTERN BOOKS IN REVIEW
D. L. Meredith

Books Editor

 

Books are selected for review at the discretion of the editors as a service to authors, scholars, and research institutions; original material receives first priority with reprints occasionally included at the discretion of the editors.  Unless otherwise indicated, all entries are current publications. ISBN included with available.

NONFICTION BOOKS

 

ALTER, JUDY.  Miriam “Ma” Ferguson: First Woman Governor of Texas.  State House Press, cloth, 72 pages, $17.95.  ISBN 1-933337-01-X.

One volume in the Stars of Texas Series, which focuses on lesser well-known Texans and their contributions to Texas history, Ma Ferguson is a biography of this controversial woman for younger readers.  I say controversial because when I moved to Texas as a young woman I received the impression that Ma and Pa Ferguson were a joke.  Pa Ferguson was impeached during his second term as governor (I have no doubt for good reason) and could not run again for public office, so his wife ran in his place, pledging to clear her husband’s name and restore the family honor.  She won and eventually served two terms, 1925-1927 and 1933-1935.  Pa had a desk next to hers in the state capital and charged families to prepare pardons and present them to his wife.  The pardons secretary for Ma blew the whistle on that practice. Pa Ferguson also represented several railroads, which many charged was a conflict of interest; Ma appointed him to the Railroad Commission at his request.  Alter also states that Pa tried to charge for interviews although he was not successful.  He advised companies bidding for contracts to advertise in his newspaper.

Was Ma a good governor?  According to Alter she supported some worthwhile causes: better education for children in rural schools; prison reform; controlling if not getting rid of the Ku Klux Klan.  However, there were questionable practices dealing with money and her propensity for agreeing with anything her husband wanted.  If Ma and Pa Ferguson were not, strictly speaking, honest, they were colorful and influenced Texas politics for a time.  As one would expect from Alter, the book is well-written. I wouldn’t consider Ma a good role model, but she was influential.  The book includes a time line of Ma’s life, a glossary, reading list, and index.

 

AUERBACH, JEROLD S.  Explorers in Eden; Pueblo Indians and the Promised Land.  University of New Mexico Press, cloth, 205 pages, $34.95.  ISBN 0-8263-3945-X.

On a visit to a Santa Fe art gallery Auerbach became fascinated with Edward S. Curtis’s photograph “Taos Water Girls.”  The gallery owner called it the “Rebecca” photograph after the Biblical Rebecca and her water jug.  From that point on Auerbach explored the Biblical imagery’s effect on visitors’ perceptions of Pueblo Indians.  From the Puritans who saw the New World as God’s Promised Land, to slaves’ emancipation likened to the Jewish Exodus from Egypt, to the Mormons searching the wilderness of Utah for their own version of the Promised Land, Auerbach believes that Biblical metaphors are found throughout American history.  He sees the Pueblo Indian culture as the last remaining symbol of Biblical purity.  The commercialism of the twentieth century has made Pueblo women artisans and artists independent and respected members of their culture, rather than making them slaves of industry as feminists have claimed. Indeed, the expanding Pueblo crafts market brought power and prestige (traditionally male prerogatives) “to Native women, who, ever since the end of the nineteenth century, have to be recognized and remunerated for their artistic skill.”

With this remuneration came the end of the view of Pueblo society as Eden according to Auerbach.  With the arrival of the Harvey House Hotels and the Santa Fe Railroad, Americans had the opportunity to visit the Pueblos and view Eden in their search for meaning in their lives that modern American culture failed to provide.  Auerbach provides us a glimpse of these American explorers who for sixty years, until the mid-twentieth century, discovered, or thought they had, the spiritual allure of Biblical antiquity merging with American history in the form of Pueblo peoples and rituals.  Such people saw the Pueblos as an opportunity for regeneration.  Among the explorers were Mabel Dodge Luhan, Charles F. Lummis, lifelong friend of Teddy Roosevelt, and D.H. Lawrence.  Using diaries, letters, memoirs, photographs, paintings, postcards, advertisements, anthropological field studies, and scholarly monographs, Auerbach seeks to explain the enduring appeal of the Pueblos.  The book includes chapter notes, bibliography, and index.  It is a fascinating study and compelling reading.

 

BAILEY, JACK. A Texas Cowboy’s Journal: Up the Trail to Kansas in 1868, edited by David Dary.  University of Oklahoma Press, cloth, 160 pages, $24.95.  ISBN 0-8061-3737-1.

In the earliest known journal of a cattle drive from Texas to Kansas, Jack Bailey describes what it was like to live and work as a cowboy in the southern plains just after the Civil War.  Bailey made his drive before practices were standardized.  For example, some of the men, including the trail boss, brought their wives and children along in wagons.  Sometimes the women did the cooking; other times the cowboys would cook.  Later trail drives hired cooks.  David Dary provides a long introduction that provides a historical context and includes his comments on trying to track down the identity of Jack Bailey from clues in his diary and from census records.  There is strong evidence that he was John W. Bailey of Jack County, Texas.  Dary also includes footnotes to elucidate comments in the diary, including modern place names so the reader may follow the route of the trail drive.  What is interesting to me is the number of people that the trail drive meets along the way: Indians of various tribes, Buffalo Soldiers, cowboys from other trail drives, and other miscellaneous individuals. 

The journal is fascinating.  While there are frequent grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors, the journal as a whole is quite literate, more so than many I have read.  One gets a real sense of Jack Bailey’s personality as he doesn’t hesitate to express his opinion.  He is very sympathetic to the Buffalo Soldiers they encounter, but doesn’t seem to have a high opinion of Indians. 

Thursday, Aug 13th [1898]

“ . . . . Negro soldiers camp near us.  They are resting, They are so fatigued.  We all sympathise with them in a Lonn [sp.].  Adare sending them a lot of fresh beef.  Hope that will relieve them.  Some one of the Negroes said they had nothing to eat but some bacon + white fish light bread cheese rice + crackers.  Said their coffee, tea, + sugar got wet as if they were spoilt.  He was done eating til he got back to Fort.”

The last few pages of the journal include some poetry that the other drovers asked him to write.  The book includes a bibliography and index.  Anyone writing a trail drive book would find this journal informative.  For the rest of us it is fun reading.

 

CAFFEY, DAVID L.  Frank Springer and New Mexico: From the Colfax County War to the Emergence of Modern Santa Fe.  Texas A&M University Press, cloth, 280 pages, $34.95.  ISBN 1-58544-464-2.

A biography of a man who had a great deal of influence on the development of New Mexico, including the architectural style that would come to characterize Santa Fe, Frank Springer and New Mexico is fascinating reading.  At age twenty-four, Frank Springer left his Iowa law practice to go to work as an attorney for the Maxwell Land Grant and Railroad company, a position that put him in opposition to the gang of outlaw politicians and businessmen known to history as the Santa Fe Ring.  It was Frank Springer who won the case awarding title of 1.7 million acres to the Maxwell Land Grant and Railroad company.  He later became president of the company and directed the development of logging, mining, ranching, and irrigation projects.    He was a legislator, president of the Board of Regents for New Mexico Normal University, laid the foundation for the Museum of New Mexico, published his own newspaper, and collected fossils, some of which are in the Smithsonian.  If you have any interest at all in New Mexico, then you should read this book.  It includes end notes, a list of selected works by Frank Springer, a bibliography, and index.

 

COULTER, LANE and MAURICE DIXON, JR.  New Mexican Tin Work: 1840-1940.  University of New Mexico Press, pap., $29.95.  ISBN 0-8263-1525-9.

When this book was first published in 1990, the New Mexico Historical Review predicted that it would “be the definitive work on the subject for a long time.”  How true these words proved to be.  Today, a first edition of this authoritative and highly sought-after volume demands a price of more than $100 on the rare book market. 

After giving meaningful descriptions of the types and styles of tinwork, as well as the tools, materials, and processes involved in its manufacture, authors Coulter and Dixon, both experienced studio artists with many years experience in folk art between them, provide a thorough overview of the tinsmiths themselves, along with illustrated examples of their handicrafts.  The book contains nearly 200 black and white and 16 color plates of various works.  Notes, a glossary, an appendix listing all of the known territorial Hispanic tinsmiths working from 1850 to 1910, and a comprehensive bibliography make this book a must for anyone remotely interested in the early village arts of New Mexico.

–Guest Review by James A. Crutchfield

 

DYE, VICTORIA E.  All Aboard for Santa Fe.  University of New Mexico Press, hardcover, $24.95.

            Victoria Dye, a native New Mexican with an extensive background in tourism, here gives the reader the fascinating story of the more than fifty year dominancy of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad in promoting tourism in New Mexico, first the territory, then the state.  Later, through an ingenious relationship with the Fred Harvey Company, the railroad not only lured people from back East to the fabulous natural and cultural attractions of the Southwest, but also provided the best in food and lodging for them.             

            The book is abundantly illustrated with photographs of sites, as well as reproductions of Santa Fe RR brochures.  Seven appendices yield all kinds of tourism, hotel, and curio shop statistics and the list of the published brochures from the Santa Fe Railroad and the Fred Harvey Company, from 1891 to 1958, is comprehensive.

            This is an engaging book for anyone interested in learning more about the commercial endeavors that first brought New Mexico and much of the Southwest to the attention of the average American.

            –Guest Review by James A. Crutchfield

 

EGGERMONT-MOLENAAR, MARY, Editor with contributions by ALICE KEHOE, INGE GENEE, and KLAAS VAN BERKEL.  Montana 1911: A Professor and His Wife Among the Blackfeet.  The University of Nebraska Press, pap., 417 pages, $35.00. ISBN 0-8032-1828-1.
    In the summer of 1911 Dutch anthropologist and linguist Dr. C.C. Uhlenbeck conducted fieldwork among the southern Piegan Indians, a branch of the Blackfeet Nation.  He was accompanied by his wife, Wilhelmina, who kept a daily diary of their experiences on the reservation.  The diary, translated into English and published in its entirety for the first time, covers the dates Thursday, June 8–Sunday, September 17, 1911.  Mrs. Uhlenbeck describes the appearances, dwellings, dances, and songs of the Piegans.
            Also included is a biographical introduction to the Uhlenbecks, an essay on Mrs. Uhlenbeck as a diarist, an essay on Professor Uhlenbeck’s linguistic work with the Blackfeet, legendary histories of the Blackfeet, and a collage of Blackfeet texts recorded by Professor Uhlenbeck.  There are also three appendices: A. “Patronymics and Proper Names of the Peigans,” by C.C. Uhlenbeck; B. “Social Organization of the Southern Peigans;” and C. “The Dances of the Peigan” by J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong.  Of interest to mystery fans is the fact that Robert van Gulik, well-known author of the Judge Dee Chinese detective novels, was a student of Uhlenbeck’s and helped him finish his Blackfoot grammar and vocabulary.

    Needless to say it is Mrs. Uhlenbeck’s diaries that are the greatest interest to me, since my greatest weakness is personal diaries, journals, letters, etc. She was an educated woman and her diary entries reflect that: highly descriptive and eloquent narrative interspersed with some dialogue by the Blackfeet.  “How friendly he seemed to be, this long, lanky man with his very dark complexion, his black eyes, his shining, black, straight hair, parted in the middle.  ‘I am come at last, only a little slow,’ he says of himself.”  Judging by her diary Mrs. Uhlenbeck was a kindly, open-hearted woman who learned to like and admire the Blackfeet, particularly the children.  If you don’t care to read the linguistic texts, and not being a gifted linguist myself, my interest flagged in these sections, by all means read Mrs. Uhlenbeck’s diary.  In terms of learning about the daily lives of the Blackfeet, her diary is more valuable than her husband’s learned texts.

 

FLEEK, SHERMAN L.  History May Be Searched in Vain: A Military History of the Mormon Battalion.   Arthur H. Clark Company, cloth, $37.50.  ISBN 0-87062-343-5.

The Mormon Battalion was the only religious unit in American military history.  The Battalion served in the Mexican War, but since it did not engage in battle, military historians have paid little attention to it.  It is usually portrayed as a unit of pioneers rather than soldiers.  The Battalion was formed in July of 1846 in Council Bluffs, Iowa.  It was disbanded in July of 1847 in California.  It consisted of five companies and was led by regular army officers, including Philip St. George Cooke.  It was part of General Stephen W. Kearny’s Army of the West, invading and occupying what would become New Mexico, Arizona, and California.  The author’s account is based on over eighty diaries, journals, memoirs, and typed manuscript copies prepared by Battalion members, including the journal of Dr. George B. Sanderson, known in Mormon legend as “Dr. Death.”  According to the press release he was one of the most hated men in the battalion.  The book includes two appendixes: “The Army Pay Scale, 1846” and “The Mormon Battalion Command and Staff.”  An extensive bibliography and index are also included along with maps and illustrations. 

According to Fleek, “These Mormon men joined as a result of a call from their church, and not so much as a call of duty from their country.”  Indeed, after Captain Allen’s recruitment speech not one man stepped forward.  It was not until Allen met with Brigham Young and other church leaders and basically got the church’s stamp of approval that the Mormon men volunteered.  Why did Brigham Young grant approval to form the Mormon Battalion?  It was quid pro quo.  Young needed bases on the Missouri River for emigrants to gather before the long trek to Utah, but he couldn’t establish bases on Indian land without government authority.  The authority arrived “in the form of forty-year-old army captain, James Allen.”  Young was nothing if not a practiced politician.  I recommend this book for anyone interested in this unique church or military history.

 

FUSSELL, BETTY.  The Story of Corn.  University of New Mexico Press, pap., $24.95.  ISBN 0-8263-3592-6.

            Winner of a Julia Child Cookbook Award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals, The Story of Corn was originally published in 1992.  It’s an all-American story about the grain that changed the world.  Developed by Mesoamerican Indians thousands of years ago, corn was appropriated by Spanish conquistadors beginning with Christopher Columbus who described it as “affixed by nature in a wondrous manner and in form and size like garden peas, white when young.”    

            From the charred remains of corn in ancient archaeological sites through its uses across the centuries, Fussell traces corn and its development.  This comprehensive, well-illustrated, 350 page tome is literally an “all you ever wanted to know about corn” book and deserves a place on the shelves of all of those with an interest in Amerindian food mechanics, the role of corn in history and legend, and its place in today’s global economy.

            –Guest Review by James A. Crutchfield

 

GALGANO, ROBERT C.  Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico.  University of New Mexico Press, hardcover, $32.50.  ISBN 0-8263-3648-5.

            One of the most interesting aspects of the Spanish entrada, whether it be in the present-day southeastern or southwestern United States, is the role the church played in the overall picture of conquest.  Feast of Souls is a brief, although thorough, study of the Spanish mission structure in the New World and the reaction of native peoples to its dominating influence. 

            Sometimes, I think, as writers of the American West, we forget about the dramatic influence the Spanish had on the eastern part of North America. But the struggles there among Indians, the military, and the various Catholic religious orders were much the same as they were in New Mexico, Arizona, and California.  The author does an admirable job in reviewing both parts of the equation and revealing the reactions of the natives in addressing the new challenges to their age-old religious practices.

            ­­­–Guest Review by James A. Crutchfield

 

GARCÍA, NASARIO.  Old Las Vegas: Hispanic Memories from the New Mexico Meadowlands.  Texas Tech University Press, hardcover, $34.95.  ISBN 0-89672-539-1.

This interesting book is a collection of oral histories gathered by the author from old time residents of the Las Vegas, New Mexico region.  The subjects of the interviews range from ranching (“Once the sun came up, you were already working, you understand?  If you went to work for someone else, it was fifty cents a day.  Not eight hours a day like now.  A complete day, from sunrise to sunset.  You understand?”), to housekeeping (“The life of a woman was very difficult.  We worked as hard as the men, in the fields, shearing sheep . . . .”), to witchcraft (“But long ago there were witches: malevolent witches and folk-healing witches.  There were herb specialists and practitioners of black magic.  They inflicted evil on people.”), to politics (“There’s no difference between the politicians of yesteryear and today’s, nor will there be, because I know from experience.  I was a politician once, until I found out that everything was the same.  And I quit; I stepped aside, because everything’s the same.”).

The book’s text is presented in both Spanish and English, and it is illustrated with photographs of many of the interviewees.  An extensive glossary of the northern New Mexico dialect is included, as are brief biographies of the participants in the project.  A delightful book.

                                                –Guest review by James A. Crutchfield

 

GULICK, BILL. Sixty-Four Years as a Writer. Caxton Press, Trade paper, $16.95. 0-87004-4532.

            The byline on the cover of Sixty-Four Years as a Writer clues the reader that this will be an unusual autobiography. It reads, “by Bill Gulick who survived them.” That gets right to the heart of it. He survived them. The book is about the ups and downs of a phenomenally long and successful career as a writer of fiction and nonfiction.

Gulick sold his first stories to pulp magazines while in college in 1940, and has continued to sell his writing to this day. Not only did he sell steadily to the pulps and slicks, as well as book publishers, but also to film companies. He has written a few plays as well. And let us not forget his poetry. What's more, once he launched his writing career, he made a living from it and has not had a “day job,” as regular employment is called, since then.

Gulick was fortunate to have as his college mentors at the University of Oklahoma two instructors whose impact on Western literature is massive even now. He learned his craft from Walter Campbell, who wrote under the pen name of Stanley Vestal, and his assistant, Foster Harris. Both men nurtured the talents that Gulick would soon be employing to make a living as a freelancer.

To that point Gulick had worked as a drug company salesman and with a utility company that was building power lines. After that, he was a full-time writer, initially selling stories to pulp magazines, and later to the slicks, and especially the Saturday Evening Post, which paid handsomely. His right arm, which suffered the aftereffects of polio, kept him out of the army during the war. He moved to Greenwich Village, then in its low-rent heyday, surviving somehow as a writer of pulp fiction. But by 1945 he was off to the Pacific Northwest, where he resided most of the rest of his life. There he met Jeanne Abbott while involved in little theater, and eventually married her. For half a century they were a team. She was a gifted librarian, his researcher, and his typist, not to mention his muse and critic, pal and fellow-voyager on the perilous path of freelance writing.

He was blessed with fine agents, Carl Brandt, Sr., and then junior, for his literary output, and the legendary H. N. Swanson, out on Sunset Boulevard, handling his Hollywood material. The fifties were the heyday of magazine publishing, a time when the Saturday Evening Post promised a forty-eight-hour verdict on all submissions (and always fulfilled its promise), and paid Gulick as much as $2,500 a story, an amount equal to ten times that in today's debased dollars.

He turned to novels, eventually writing twenty-seven of them. His Bend of the Snake became the feature film, Bend of the River, starring James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, and Julie Adams. His comic novel, The Hallelujah Train, about a Denver-bound wagon train loaded with four hundred barrels of booze and beset by Temperance women and tribesmen wanting to get their hands on the firewater, became the last great Cinerama film, The Hallelujah Trail, with Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, and Brian Keith.

He turned to nonfiction, writing masterful studies of the rivers and history of the Pacific Northwest, for Caxton Press, Mountain Press, and various university presses. He became expert in the history of the Northwest, and from this research there flowed a steady output of books about that part of the country.

In addition to all that, he wrote plays, some of them staged as outdoor tableaux celebrating centennial or other great anniversaries. In time he became one of the foremost playwrights dealing with outdoor dramas, and was widely consulted in that field.

Along the way, he became one of the founding members of Western Writers of America, being the sixth person to join in 1953. He doubted that the organization would last and still seems a little surprised that it did. He ascribes its survival to high professional membership qualifications. Later he served as president. The autobiography devotes generous anecdotal space to the many friends he met in WWA, and the conventions he attended as well. 

Like others whose entire income was derived from writing, he had his high moments and low times when he was broke, times when he was flush and able to relax a little, times when he was miffed by ill treatment. But he stuck to the basic rules of survival: keep writing, keep improving, stay out of debt, keep plenty of projects in the pipeline, bargain hard and well, and don't forget to have some fun while at it. During flush periods he and Jeanne traveled extensively, gathering material for future stories.

All this he recounts in his autobiography, and does it with candor, freshness, and a dry wit. He kept a journal all those years, and that plus a sharp memory has enabled him to describe these long-gone events with a detail and pungence that makes them seem immediate. He includes the details of contract negotiation, studio visits, helpful and unhelpful editors and publishers. There are well-wrought vignettes of film magnates, producers, and directors.

When the great New York publishing houses were devoured by conglomerates in the 1980s, his life changed. Up until then, New York publishers welcomed him and paid him well; after the conglomerates took over, life was not good for midlist authors. He found himself at odds with perfidious Doubleday and other publishers, and turned more and more to academic and regional presses. These were, alas, subject to the same failings as the New York publishing companies, and it became plain that the writing life would be much more difficult henceforth. But that didn't even slow him down.

It was always a struggle, but in recent times it has been harder than ever. Bill Gulick never quit. He wrote his early stories longhand, and pecked them out on a typewriter. Jeanne helped him do the final drafts. Now he has a modern computer to help him. He became a formidable golfer. He survived. This richly wrought and remarkable autobiography captures the heart and soul of this writer's life. But it is also a quiet testament to Bill Gulick's courage and perseverance, his modesty and humility, his gifts of storytelling, his ability to deal successfully with all sorts of editors, agents, rivals, producers, publishers, and moneymen. It is also an exhibit of his sense of humor. The book is chock full of wryly told comic anecdotes.

Jeanne died of cancer in 2001. Bill Gulick sold his Walla Walla home and moved into smaller quarters, after donating his extensive papers to Whitman College.

This is a splendid, evenhanded study of a remarkable life.

 ---Guest Review by Richard S. Wheeler

 

HOIG, STAN.  A Travel Guide to the Plains Indian Wars.  University of New Mexico Press, pap., 217 pages, $21.95.  ISBN 0-8263-3934-4.

Hoig provides an overview of the Plains Indian wars, then presents us with directions to military forts and battle sites.   Each chapter includes a very brief bibliography and notes.  The book includes an index.  Hoig also lists museums along the way, a helpful edition to those of us who are addicted to such institutions.  His introduction is a plaintive cry to preserve the military and battle sites before they disappear entirely.  A letter to your representative, senator, state legislator, and state and local historical societies on the subject of preservation might be helpful.  At any rate, take seriously Hoig’s comments about the physical evidence of the existence of these forts and battle sites disappearing as we speak, grab a copy of A Travel Guide to the Plains Indian Wars, and hit the road while there is still something to see.

 

JACKSON, ROBERT H.  Missions and the Frontiers of Spanish America.  Pentacle Press; Distributed by the University of New Mexico Press, hardcover, $44.95.  ISBN 0-9763500-0-9.

The subtitle of this monumental volume is “A comparative study of the impact of environmental, economic, political, and socio-cultural variations on the missions in the Rio de la Plata region and on the northern frontier of New Spain.”  A more apt one might be “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Spanish mission system in northern New Spain and the Argentina-Paraguay region.”  Of course, as aficionados of the American West will recognize, the “northern New Spain” part of the book covers present-day northern Mexico, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

Stuffed full of photographs, maps, graphs, and statistics ranging from the prices of selected spices shipped to Texas between the years 1746 and 1772 to birth, baptism, and death rates at various missions, this book is ideal for the researcher of Spanish borderland history.  An appendix chronicles, year by year, the construction of a number of California missions.  Extensive endnotes, a large bibliography, and an index allow the reader to glide through the text and to locate further references.  

                                                –Guest Review by James A. Crutchfield

 

JAEHN, TOMAS.  Germans in the Southwest: 1850-1920. University of New Mexico Press, hardcover, $24.95.  ISBN 0-8263-3498-9.

            Of the many groups of European immigrants who sailed to America’s shores during the nineteenth century, probably none was as influential and far-ranging as the Germans.  My own grandmother, as a child, was one of these, arriving in the United States in the early 1860s.  As a writer of the American West, it has always intrigued me that her uncle, Alfred Hartenstein, left behind an autobiography in which he detailed his arrival in New York City “in excellent spirits” on June 23, 1850.  He enlisted in the U. S. army two years later, was assigned to Company F, 6th U. S. Infantry at Fort Leavenworth, served under General William Selby Harney during the Sioux war, and eventually participated in the construction of Fort Mohave.

            Tomas Jaehn has rendered German-Americans a great service with his new book about the German presence in the Southwest, particularly, New Mexico.  He covers the contributions of such early observers as Frederick A. Wislizenus and Balduin Möllhausen who both reported on conditions in the Southwest to thousands of eager German readers back in the Old Country, as well as those by famed Taos artists Gustave Baumann, Ernest Blumenschein, Walter Ufer, and Oscar Berninghaus.  In a particularly interesting chapter, the author provides a statistical, yet readable, “profile of German ethnicity in New Mexico.”

            Jaehn’s book is essential to those who are interested in the influence of Northern Europeans–specifically Germans–on the American Southwest.  It comes complete with an appendix related to occupational data, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, and index.

                                                            –Guest review by James A. Crutchfield

 

KAUFMAN, POLLY WELTS.  National Parks and the Woman’s Voice, a History.  Updated edition.  University of New Mexico Press, paper, $22.95. ISBN  0-8263-3994-8.

            National Parks and the Woman’s Voice, A History, originally published in 1996, received acclaim from scholars in a variety of disciplines–history, women’s studies, leisure and recreation studies and popular culture.  It remains a ground breaking examination of the role of women in the creation, interpretation, and protection of the national parks.  With this updated edition, Kaufman states “it seemed appropriate to find out the present extent of women citizen’s activism in preserving national parks.  It is also a good time to learn how far the promise of the inclusion of career women in the Park Service hierarchy has progressed.”

            Rather, the “Preface to the Updated Edition” provides the only new material.  Included here are sections titled “Park Service Career Women,” “Partnerships with the Public,”  “Women Park Activists,” and “Women’s History in National Parks.”  Each of these expands upon issues brought forth in the original.  Since 1996, women have made advances in the National Park Service–several becoming superintendents.   Some appointments are notable, such as the appointment of Suzanne Lewis as the first woman superintendent at Yellowstone.  However, listing all the NPS female superintendents would illustrate just how much advancement was achieved in these ranks during the last decade.  Of interest to WWA members is the brief mention about the work of novelist and former park ranger, Nevada Barr.   Kaufman notes that these books are popular with park rangers even though the situations are a bit more dramatic than average.  It would be interesting to know if these novels have increased interest among women in joining the National Park Service.

            Integrating new material within the text would enhance the publication.  I wanted more than the fifteen pages found in the preface.  No new additional photographs were included.  This work remains an excellent introduction to women’s role not just in the national parks but to their role in environmental history and outdoor recreation.  It provides a good base for expanding the study to state parks.

                        --Guest Review by Tamsen Emerson Hert

 

LAMAR, HOWARD R.  Charlie Siringo’s West: An Interpretive Biography.  University of New Mexico Press, hardcover, $29.95.  ISBN 0-8263-3669-8.

            Two legends of the American West–Charles Angelo Siringo, better known to his readers and avid followers as Charlie, and Howard R. Lamar–cross paths in this new biography of the original “Texas Cowboy.”  Throughout his life, from the troubling years just prior to the Civil War to the menacing days of the Great Depression, Siringo rubbed elbows with some of the West’s most interesting and enduring characters and historian Lamar, former president of Yale University, does an outstanding job in documenting his life story.

            But Charlie Siringo’s West is more than a mere biography of one man.  True, it tells the life story of Charlie, but beyond that, it is an exhaustive overview of the world in which Siringo lived and worked and about which he wrote in several books detailing his experiences as a cowboy, detective, best-selling author, and bit player in Hollywood Grade B westerns.  Lamar writes early on in the book that “Charles Siringo’s career and writings are significant enough to deserve a larger context” and that his goal was to “provide some account not just of himself but of the exciting world . . . in which he lived.”  He has accomplished his mission with commanding success.

            This book won the Wrangler from the National Cowboy Museum this year.

            –Guest Review by James A. Crutchfield

 

LOMELI, FRANCISCO A. and CLARK A. COLAHAN, Translators and Editors.  Defying the Inquisition in Colonial New Mexico: Miguel de Quintana’s Life and Writings.   University of New Mexico Press, cloth, 242 pages, $39.95.  ISBN 0-8263-3957-3.

Miguel de Quintana arrived in what is now New Mexico with Diego de Vargas in 1694.  He was a notary and secretary to the alcade.  He wrote poetry for himself and his family and religious plays for the community.  In 1734 he was accused of being a heretic and brought before the colonial inquisition.  The first part of Lomeli’s and Colahan’s Defying the Inquisition is an essay focused on the Catholic Church and society in colonial New Mexico.  The second part is a translation and literary criticism of de Quintana’s writings which are the second oldest in Hispanic colonial New Mexico’s literary history. 

The essay that comprises the first part of the book is alone worth the purchase price.  The writing is like a sharpened knife that stabs anyone within reach.  The second part of the book, de Quintana’s poetry and plays, is not as accessible to the reader as the first part primarily because, as the editors warn, some familiarity with Hispanic Roman Catholic traditions is required to understand what de Quintana was saying.  In today’s humanist society even such familiarity might not be enough, as many readers view these traditions intellectually rather than emotionally.  They may find the traditions quaint and naive.  The writings and documents from the archives of the inquisition are first presented in English, then in Spanish.  The book includes end notes, bibliography, and index.

 

PARINS, JAMES W.  Elias Cornelius Boudinot: A Life on the Cherokee Border.  University of Nebraska Press, cloth, 250 pages, $60.00.  ISBN 0-8032-3752-9.
    This is the first full biography of Elias Cornelius Boudinot, a member of the Ridge-Boudinot-Watie family, who was influential in the opening of Indian Territory to white settlement, and as a result was ostracized by many Cherokees and in fact his life was threatened numerous times. Boudinot was raised in the East after the assassination of his father, and returned to Indian Territory as an ally of his uncle Stand Watie.  He served in the Confederate Army and was a representative of the Cherokees in the Confederate Congress.  He took part in the treaty negotiations after the war and was influential in opening Indian Territory to the railroads.  He was a newspaper editor and publisher, and a political figure in Washington.  The most interesting aspect of Boudinot’s life, and one I
wished had received more space, is the closely parallel political thinking with his father, Elias Boudinot (Gallegina, or Buck Watie).  Elias Boudinot was instrumental in the removal of the Eastern Cherokees to present-day western Arkansas, and saw education as the road to advancement of the Cherokee Nation.  Elias Cornelius Boudinot was  instrumental in white settlement of Indian Territory and eventual statehood.  Opponents of both men saw their beliefs and actions as detrimental, if not treasonous, to the Cherokee Nation.  Elias Cornelius Boudinot and his father, according to Parins, are still the subject of controversy today, depending on whether a modern Cherokee supported the old Ridge-Boudinot-Watie party, or the Ross faction.  “. . . the Boudinot/Ross dichotomy is mirrored in many ‘progressive’ versus ‘conservative’ tribal disputes today.”  For a better understanding of today’s tribal disputes Elias Cornelius Boudinot: A Life on the Cherokee Border is an excellent background text.
    The book includes end notes, bibliography, and index, and provides enough general background to Cherokee history that one need not be an expert to understand the relevance of Boudinot’s life to the continued dichotomy of modern Cherokee tribal politics.

 

SMITH, F. TODD.  From Dominance to Disappearance: The Indians of Texas and the Near Southwest, 1786-1859.  The University of Nebraska Press, cloth, 320 pages, $59.95.  ISBN 0-8032-4313-8.
    A very scholarly history of the various Indian tribes of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, among them the Comanches, Caddos, the Karankawas, the Tonkawas, the Lipan apaches, the Atakapas, the Cherokees and the Alabama-Coushattas, traces the movement from numerical and economic dominance from 1786 to approximately 1836, to their eventual disappearance as a demographic factor after the Texas Revolution and the increased white settlement.  Professor Smith is an expert on the subject of the indigenous peoples of the Southwest during this period, and his research is meticulous and dependently accurate; however, his scholarly style may limit the book’s accessibility to the general reader.  The book includes end notes, bibliography, and index.

 

SPECHT, JOE W.  The Women There Don’t Treat You Mean: Abilene in Song, CD included.  State House Press, cloth, 112 pages, $14.95.  ISBN 1-933337-06-0.
    Specht surveys the range of songs in which Abilene, Texas, figures, including “The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball” in 1890, “Abilene,” “The Road to Abilene,” “Way Out in Abilene,” and “The Jewel of Abilene” in 2004.  This year Abilene celebrates its 125th anniversary (1881-2006), and this brief look at the town in song is perfect for the celebration.  The book is accompanied by a six song CD featuring local Abilene vocal artists singing–what else?–songs about Abilene.  Although I generally donate most review copies I receive to the local library, this particular jewel will join my own collection of books about Texas, and what is more Texas than Abilene?

 

WORMAN, CHARLES G.  Gunsmoke and Saddle Leather: Firearms in the Nineteenth-Century American West.  University of New Mexico Press, hardcover, $65.00.  ISBN 0-8263-3593-4.

In 522 oversized pages, accompanied by 559 halftones, Charles G. Worman, the former deputy director of the National Museum of the U. S. Air Force and an authority on antique weapons, explores the entire spectrum of 19th century Western history as interpreted by the firearms of each major era.  From “Guns of the Native Americans,” to those used by the mountain men, the military, the 49ers, and the cattlemen, through the buffalo hunter, the author adeptly weaves the fascinating story of the role guns played in the vast panorama of Westward Expansion.

But this fine volume presents more than the mere history of weaponry in the American West.  “My primary interest has been anecdotal accounts left by the men and women who lived on the frontier rather than on the evolution of firearms technology,” writes the author and his generous reliance and quotation of original source material as it relates to the usage of firearms in everyday life assures the reader that he has accomplished his goal.

At the risk of digging up old clichés, this book is a “must” for students of early firearms and their utilization in the early West.  The volume includes appendices, notes, bibliography, and index.

–Guest Review by James A. Crutchfield

 

NONFICTION OF SPECIAL INTEREST

 

HUGHES, DEBRA.  Albuquerque in Our Time: 30 Voices, 300 Years.  Museum of New Mexico Press, pap., 144 pages, $24.95.  ISBN 0-89013-481-2.

This is an anthology of tributes to Albuquerque as the city celebrates its 300th anniversary by various residents, some well-known, others known only to their neighbors.  This is an interesting history.

 

NINNEMANN, JOHN L. and DUANE A. SMITH.  San Juan Bonanza: Western Colorado’s Mining Legacy.  University of New Mexico Press, cloth, 85 pages, $24.95.  ISBN 0-8263-3578-0.

This is a book of stunning black-and-white photographs of Colorado’s crumbling mining infrastructure in the San Juan Mountains, with accompanying text.  Included are old camp houses, empty mineshafts, and narrow-gauge railroads.

 


FICTION BOOKS

 

CASEY, DONIS.  The Old Buzzard Had It Coming.  Poisoned Pen Press, cloth, 216 pages, $24.95.  ISBN 1-59058-149-0.
    Occasionally a book comes along that is so unusual, so unique, so downright warm and homey, that the reader falls in love with the characters, the setting, the plot, the language; in short, everything about the story is so likeable that the reader can’t stop turning the pages.  The Old Buzzard Had It Coming is that kind of book.  Set in 1912 Oklahoma, on a farm owned by Alafair Tucker, mother of nine, and her husband, Shaw, the reader is immediately hooked as one of Alafair’s twin daughters brings home handsome John Lee Day, son of an abusive drunk known for his bootleg whiskey and beating his wife and children.  The reader, along with Alafair, is concerned by the apparent closeness of the two teenagers.  To be blunt, John Lee is from a very bad family, not the sort that Alafair wishes her daughter to, heaven forbid, marry into.  Things change somewhat when John Lee’s daddy is found frozen in a snowdrift, but not for the better.  When Alafair helps Mrs. Day lay out her husband’s body, she finds a bullet hole behind his ear.  She is even more worried when she discovers that her little derringer is missing from its hiding place in her bedroom.  Then John Lee, the sheriff’s chief suspect, disappears, and Alafair’s daughter is acting in a very suspicious manner.  Now Alafair is terrified.  Only her
daughter could have stolen the derringer.  The question is: did her daughter give it to John Lee, or did she use it herself?  This is a delightful book whether you read it as a Western or as a mystery.

 

COTTON, RALPH.  Trouble Creek. Signet, pap., $5.99. ISBN 0-45121-7926.

            Ralph Cotton begins his novel with a run-of-the-mill bank holdup by a second-rate gang of criminals (“outlaws” is too nice a word for them), then pulls a bait-and-switch that turns his tale into one of greed, murder, and futility.  Texas Ranger Sam Burrack goes after the bad guys—not one or two but three separate clusters of evil-doers, each with its own motives, none of which are of any benefit to society.  At times darkly comic, more often brutal and vicious, Trouble Creek offers story and characters that expect little hope or redemption.  Burrack tries to offer his opponents fair choices, but they invariably take the bad option.  Unlike the characters in Burt Kennedy’s work where villains display at least some sense of morality or longing for a life spent less pointlessly, Cotton’s cast of criminals has neither conscience nor code of honor.  The end of the novel offers a “last man standing” from which Cotton suggests a valuable lesson: money only is as valuable as you think it is.

            There’s an odd gaffe in the text.  An outlaw is shot “square in the chest” on p. 199, and subsequent references to the fatal wound are made on pp. 221 and 222; but on p. 201 “blood ran down from the hole in his forehead.”  That must’ve been some bullet.

                        --Guest Review by Abraham Hoffman

 

 

FERGUS, JIM.  The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932.  Hyperion, cloth, 368 pages, $23.95.  ISBN 1-4013-0054-5.
    The Wild Girl is another very good novel of the West.  A well-known outdoors sports writer, Fergus has a discerning eye for descriptive narrative of the landscape and man’s relation to it.  Young Ned Giles is orphaned when his father commits suicide, leaving him nothing but a brand new sports car.  With no money to continue in college Ned drops out and leaves Chicago, determined to be a photojournalist.  He works at various papers across the country until he arrives in Douglas, Arizona, where he talks his way into a job photographing the Great Apache Expedition for the local newspaper.  The Expedition is to travel into the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico to free the kidnapped son of a Mexican hidalgo.  The Expedition is made up of wealthy hunters and adventures, including Tolley Phillips, a gay man who exaggerates his affinity for his own sex, and hires his own English valet for the Expedition; Margaret, a young anthropologist working on her dissertation, who wants to prove that woman are competent to do field work; a wolf hunter named Billy Flowers who didn’t mind hunting men; and two Apaches, Joseph Valor who scouted for General Crook, and his grandson, Albert who dislikes all white men.

    The book alternates between Ned’s diaries of the Expedition, and the experiences of La Nina Bronca, the wild girl, one of the lost Apaches who live in the Sierra Madre mountains and avoid all other people except to steal or kidnap women and children.  The story of the wild girl’s capture by Billy Flowers, her escape, and the foolish hunt for her by Ned, Tolley and his valet, Margaret, and Joseph and Albert Valor, is compelling reading, painful in places.  It is exciting, bloody, and sad as the Expedition members try to survive their capture by the Apaches.  There is love and loss, cruelty and kindness.  It is a beautifully written story that will haunt you after you finish.

 

RECKNOR, E.K.  The Legendary Kid Donovan.  Signet, pap., 278 pages, $5.99.  ISBN 0-451-21632-6.
    Nobody writes a more humorous Western than Recknor under whatever name she  uses.  The Legendary Kid Donovan is no exception.  Imagine a young kid just sixteen-years-old, newly orphaned, financially embarrassed, who leaves New York City for the wilds of Tonto’s Wickiup, Arizona Territory to live with his only surviving relative: Uncle Hector.  Imagine his grief when he learns that Uncle Hector is dead.  Imagine his disappointment to learn that he is heir to his uncle’s supposedly worthless mining claims.  Imagine his horror when he learns he has also inherited his Uncle Hector’s most prized and lucrative possession: a saloon and whorehouse combination called Hanratty’s. 

            Imagine his wounded pride when one of his uncle’s friends, a man named Cole, informed him that he better call himself something besides his real name: Horace Tate Pemberton Smith.  Horace refuses.  He’s proud of his name despite the sniggers it causes.  He soon earns another name when he runs into a gunfighter who unintentionally (on Horace’s part) ends up dead. Now Horace is known as Kid Donovan, the baddest bad guy in Arizona Territory.  Then there is the matter of his uncle’s mining claims, and the characters Cole digs up to work them.  Lop Ear Tommy Cleveland is Horace’s business partner, and Lop Ear and Cole hire Jingles Belden, who carries ten cases of dynamite in his wagon.
    You get the picture, don’t you?  Nobody writes a more humorous book than Recknor, nor creates more eccentric characters who are actually believable. If you need a dose of humor to fix what ails you, try The Legendary Kid Donovan.

 

ULMEN, STEVEN MERRILL. Toby Ryker. Lulu.com, trade paperback, no price given, ISBN: 1-4116-6039-0.

            Toby Ryker is an aging mountain man who’s never forgotten or forgiven the men who slaughtered his Indian wife and child. When by chance he sees the last living perpetrator of the tragedy, he shoots him, but because the man’s small daughter is witness, gives up his vengeance and leaves the man alive. Toby, a devil-may-care man’s man, (with a soft spot for children) goes on his way, whoring and instigating fights just for fun in saloons on the way to Laramie, Wyoming to visit his old friend, David Stewart. He’s unaware the shooting has brought ruthless bounty hunter John McQuiston down on his trail. To make matters worse, Toby’s heart is about to give out on him. He wants one more elk hunt with David before he dies. They head into the mountains, ignorant of the fact that McQuiston is following, with McQuiston followed in his turn by Sheriff Jesse O’Brian. Turns out the bounty hunter, in his drive to capture Ryker, has murdered an innocent cowhand who got in his way. In a finale that involves catsup—yes, catsup—the reader is being led into a sequel. Full of graphic, comic turns of phrase, this man’s novel is sure to please.  

            --Guest Review by C.K. Crigger

 

 

WEST, JOSEPH A.  Shootout at Picture Rock.  Signet, pap., $5.99. ISBN 0-45121-8140.

            Many Westerns feature lawmen doing their duty, but in Joseph A. West’s Shootout at Picture Rock, Deputy U.S. Marshal John Kilcoyn has a very personal interest in bringing the outlaws to justice.  The woman he loves, Angela Wilson, and her father, Dr. Alan Wilson, have been kidnapped by Jake Pride, a former lawman gone bad who Kilcoyn put in prison.  Pride demands $10,000 in ransom money.  Operating out of Dodge City, Kilcoyn teams with Ford County Sheriff Bat Masterson and a young photographer, Barry O'Neil, to embark on a dangerous mission that includes confrontations with hostile Indians, outlaws, and gunmen.  The money in Kilcoyn’s saddlebags proves an irresistible attraction to those who would kill or risk getting killed to get their hands on that $10,000.

            West has an excellent eye for detail, and with the story taking place mostly in the face of bone-chilling snowstorm and blizzard conditions, the environment could be said to be an important character in the book.  In almost every chapter Kilcoyn has a deadly encounter, and as the bodies mount up, the marshal also has to deal with his own private demons.  The involvement of Cheyenne and Sioux in the story is less convincing than the dangers presented by Pride and gunman Frank Ivers.  One wonders if Indians would really be suicidal in pursuit of a man who killed one of their own in a fair fight.  Also, since the final confrontation takes place at Horse Thief Canyon, the title of the book seems misplaced.  That said, West provides a fast-paced story that will compel readers to read just one more chapter before taking a break, and maybe just one or two more after that.

                        --Guest Review by Abraham Hoffman

 

ZIMPEL, LLOYD, A Season of Fire & Ice. Unbridled Books, cloth, $23.95.

ISBN 1-932961-19-4

 

            There’s always something to test Gerhardt Praeger in his struggle to homestead the unforgiving Dakota Territory, even with the help of his seven sons and long-suffering wife. If it’s not flood, drought, locusts or blizzards, then it is his neighbor, Beiderman, who takes up land next to him.

            Beiderman is a man larger than life, set to conquer the wilderness even as Praeger labors to exist within it. Beiderman has luck; he has water when others have none, flood waters go around him, locusts devour everyone’s crops but his. Praeger complains his young twin sons regard Beiderman with a degree of hero worship. But Praeger’s son Harris has come to see Beiderman’s success as a stain on the Praeger family, and without his father knowing, takes his own action to bring their neighbor down. It is a decision that rips apart the Praeger family, as well as the community in which they live.

            Told with humor, wonderfully graphic language, and compassionate understanding of the times and hard lives of the characters, this is a marvelous book. The story grips you from the very first page and never lets go. Highly recommended.

            --Guest Review by C.K. Crigger

 

FICTION OF INTEREST

BRAND, MAX.  Dogs of the Captain.  Five Star, cloth, 282 pages, $25.95. ISBN 1-59414-332-3.
    A young boy accepts a dare to climb to the roof of a house owned by the mysterious Captain Slocum.  The boy, Don Grier, is one of Brand’s best characters: believable as both boy and hero.


COBURN, WALT.  South of the Law Line: a Western Trio.  Five Star, cloth, 216 pages, $25.95. ISBN 1-59414-343-9.
    A trio of novellas, two of which feature Texas Ranger Bill Douglas.

 

GREY, ZANE.  Cabin Gulch.  Five Star, cloth, 329 pages, $25.95.  ISBN 1-59414-330-7.
    Originally in a censored version in a six-part serial entitled The Border Legion, this novel written in 1915 now appears with all the deleted material restored.  You owe it to yourself to read it.

 

LEMAY, ALAN.  Tonopah Range.  Five Star, cloth, 215 pages, $25.95.  ISBN 1-59414-347-1.
    A collection of six stories including the title story, “Tonopah Range,” which is nearly novel length.  LeMay is the author of The Searchers and The Unforgiven.

 

MOVIE REVIEWS

 

Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada written by Guillermo Arriaga, Produced by Tommy Lee Jones.

Reviewed by Richard D. Jensen

    The Western genre may be taken off life support if the current trend of intelligent Western movies continues.
    The success of Brokeback Mountain, the much-heralded "gay Western," has made it cool for city-slickers to dress in cowboy duds, according to the New York Times. However silly the neo-Western clothing fad may appear to traditionalists, it points to a new era of cowboy cool, and that could add up to renewed interest in the Western novel, if writers and publishers are willing to avoid clichés and bring forth stories with deeper introspection into the human condition that is universal to everyone.
    One such introspective work which will surely add to this resurgence of interest in Westerns is a new pseudo-Western movie from actor, director and real-life Texas rancher Tommy Lee Jones entitled The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. The film is not a traditional Western, nor is it simply a modern Western. Unlike Brokeback Mountain, which is a high-glossed, straightforward tale of unspoken love between two sheep herders on a remote mountain, Three Burials is an existential poem, more similar in tone to a Jean Paul Sartre story than to one of Annie Proulx's (or Larry McMurtry's and Diana Osana's) stories. Indeed Jones has pointed to French director Jean Luc Goddard and Japanese director Akira Kurosawa as his influences.
    The script, written by Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams), is terse, filled with ambiguity and ripe with unresolved conflict. It is a movie that reeks of real-life and all of the lack of closure that real life brings.
    Jones, who produces (with a French production company) and directs, portrays Pete, an aging cowboy who befriends a young Mexican vaquero who has crossed the Texas/Mexico border in search of a job punching cattle. Melquiades, portrayed deftly by Julio Cedillo, is almost child-like in his innocence. He is a gentle soul, a simple young man who, when given the opportunity to have sex with a beautiful, young woman in a hotel room opts to slow dance with her. He pines for his native Mexico and fears that, if he dies in Texas, he will be buried far from his homeland. He extracts a promise from Pete to take him back to Coahuila if he should die.
    Set in modern West Texas (and shot in Van Horn, Texas), the movie expertly captures the sense of ennui that permeates small town life in the barren, hot deserts of the American West. All of the characters live in a void, breaking all of life's rules because no one cares, least of all the town sheriff (Dwight Yoakam). The border is overrun with illegals who are hired by the ranchers and other businesses. The Border Patrol has an impossible mandate to stop the influx of illegals and it is staffed by young guns eager to beat on the undocumented aliens, especially one hot-headed patrolman named Mike (Barry Pepper) who thinks nothing of breaking the nose of a young woman whose only sin is crossing the Rio Grande without permission.
    The lives of the characters are interwoven in a pattern that only we, the audience, know. The characters are unaware of their interrelation. When the hot-headed border cop kills Estrada, he attempts to hide his deed, only to be found out by his superiors, who, rather than prosecute the errant patrolman, enlist the sheriff's aid in a cover-up. After all, one character remarks, Estrada is "only a wetback."
    Pete is incensed that his pal has been senselessly killed. When he learns of the cover-up, he takes the law into his own hands, kidnaps the patrolman, and the two men begin an odyssey that leads to their mutual redemption. It would be unfair to detail the balance of the plot. Suffice it to say that the adventure of dodging the federal and state authorities and riding horseback into the bleak sands of Coahuila, Mexico sends both men on a voyage of self-discovery.

    The story of one man fulfilling a promise to bury his friend in a far off place is not new to Jones. In Lonesome Dove, Texas Ranger Woodrow Call (Jones) carries the body of his life-long pal, Gus (Robert Duvall) all the way from Montana to be buried in the Lone Star state. Pete's efforts to bring Estrada's body home resembles that episode in the classic McMurtry Western, but with some modern twists.

    Marketed as an art house film and filled with long, languid moments of revelation and reflection about life and death, Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is more a psychological drama than a traditional shoot-em-up, thus urban audiences who are less inclined to go to the movies to see "a Western" have the opportunity to experience the story and embrace its inherent sadness without prejudging it simply because its climactic events take place on horseback.
    When that happens, the Western genre gets a much needed shot in the arm.