The Western: Four Classic Novels of the 1940s & 50s (LOA #331)

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

Discover the heroic exploits and violent struggles of the Old West through four thrilling novels. Edited by Ron Hansen, this collection shows that just like at the movies, the books of the 1940s and 1950s represent a high point for the Western. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Ox-Bow Incident, a postwar meditation on authoritarianism, Walter van Tilburg Clark explores the thin line between civilization and barbarism through the story of a lynch mob that targets three innocent men. Set in Wyoming in 1889, a time when ranchers and cattle companies waged war with each other, Jack Schaefer's Shane is built upon the timeless premise of the arrival of a mysterious stranger, 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.