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My earlier post about western novels was so popular, I decided to pick up this entry I had earlier posted only to the WesternPulps e-mail group (remember those?). It's about western novels (and some short stories) that are written by female authors. I was reading these for an essay I later used in a collection of my western-themed book of articles. This is a bit skimpy at times, but I don't have the time to edit it. Here's hoping it suffices.
Helen Hunt Jackson: Ramona: very popular in its time, but seems forgotten now. Must admit that I didn't finish the book, as the style and narration felt so dated, but interesting nevertheless in its portrayal of the oppression of Indians.
B. M. Bower: The Chip of the Flying U: I didn't get into Bower's "yuh mangy polecat" style, so I wrote more about her influence and place in the history of western fiction. I found an Elmer Kelton quote that Bower's sales diminished when the audience found out she's a woman.
Dorothy M. Johnson: The Hanging Tree: Johnson is a great short story writer, but for some reason I couldn't get into this, maybe there were too many characters for such a short length (90 pages in a Ballantine pb) or then it was because Johnson couldn't concentrate more fully on the woman in the lead (it seems she stopped writing westerns for a long time after having this frustrating experience with the editors (of Saturday Evening Post, I believe) - or then she just wasn't a novelist. Not bad, though, in any meaning of the word. Haven't seen the film, unfortunately.
Jane Barry: A Time in the Sun: I couldn't find much info on Barry, but seems like she wrote some other historical novels as well, but is largely forgotten today. Her western from 1962 is a Haycox-influenced novel about two women abducted by Indians and attempts to rescue them which have large political consequences. Barry turns the focus at times on the women themselves, not just the heroes trying to save them, and one of them doesn't want to leave his Indian husband. A bit slow, but interesting, and based on what Barry says in her foreword, she really did her homework. You can find this on Kindle, if you're interested. I read this based on her entry in The Twentieth Century Western Writers, which is still a valuable reference work.
Marguerite Noble: Filaree: this was a nice surprise, a very touching portrait of life in early 20th century Arizona, written from a perspective of a woman trying to come up with her indifferent and at times violent husband who tries to make the woman abandon his family, and her large bunch of kids. This really felt real and lived throughout, and I believe Noble based the story on her mother's life. I believe this was also mentioned in TCWW, but I don't think Noble has an entry there of her own.
JoAnn Levy: For California's Gold: a tale of the California Gold Rush told from the viewpoint of a woman whose husband forces them to go searching for gold, with tragic consequences. Suffers from being a bit too nice, though several people die in the course of the book. It's also too literary with some narrative techniques that I found implausible, especially from a diary-like narration. I wouldn't have read this, and possibly not many know about JoAnn Levy, but I received this book from a Finnish professor who had lived in the US and read lots of westerns during his time there and donated the books to the Finnish Western Society. (The books are in my cellar and I don't really know what to do with them. I'll never be able to read so many westerns in my lifetime.)
Kathleen Kent: The Outcasts: a pretty tough novel for a female writer, contains some harsh violence, but for some reason I didn't feel much interest in the characters. This was the newest novel I read for the article.
I also read short stories by Jane Candia Coleman and Peggy Simson Curry. The former's "Moving On" was superb with original characters, highly recommended. This was in the book The Morrow Anthology of Great Western Short Stories, edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski. The anthology looks very well done by and large, with lots of forgotten pulp and female writers. Peggy Simson Curry's "Geranium House" was in the anthology A Century of Great Western Stories, edited by John Jakes (at least in name, maybe he had some assistant working on this also). I didn't really care for the humorous story, but I liked reading about Curry in the short introduction. The story came out originally in SEP or Collier's. (I didn't mention Curry in my article.)
I also tried to read Mari Sandoz, but her style wore me down. I understood maybe half of what was going down in The Tom-Walker. I tried Cheyenne Autumn, but as it isn't a novel per se, I didn't try to force my way through it. I understood from an on-line essay that her publishers tried to diminish her use of the old slang, and you can rest assured they should've tried harder.
