Quickshots: Chick Bowdrie

Thanks for the intro, Beverly Garland!

I highly recommend The Collected Bowdrie Dramatizations. The audiobook versions of these come in three sets of six stories. They’re full-cast, with interviews with Louis L’Amour interspersed throughout—he talks about his writing style, his history, and the people he met while doing research. There’s a little bit of music, some great voice acting, and overall they’re just good, friendly, wholesome fun stories.

The series follows the eponymous Bowdrie, who starts off as a young man on the frontier, edging his way from the wildness of the world toward life as an outlaw. But the man manages to correct himself and, with the help of the famous Ranger McNulty, becomes a Texas Ranger. The rest of the stories are about his time as a ranger—investigations, law enforcement, that kind of thing.

Bowdrie’s career mixes classic western flavor with a bit of police procedural, and a good deal of fieldcraft, woodcraft, tracking, and survivalism. If you like any good western, imagine taking your favorite detective thriller—gritty city stuff—and setting it out in the backend of nowhere, Texas. The main character’s just a bit more wholesome than your average private dick.

These really are feel-good stories. There’s action and suspense, sure, but they’ve got that good old-fashioned “right wins over wrong” vibe I usually don’t go for. And honestly, you don’t see it that often unless it’s coming from some preachy alt-right source. But boy—these hit different. Great background listening, great to have with you on a hike or a long drive. Just overall excellent work.

The Sisters Brothers

Part western, part hard-boiled crime story, part Don Quixote-esque quest tale, The Sisters Brothers is a rollicking western that also makes a great audio book.  It is a tale of two brothers, hardened gunmen working frontier towns.  The older of the brothers is a cunning killer, the very picture of the Wild West villain.  The younger brother, our narrator, is a chubby, introverted, and introspective reluctant follower.  Both work for a mysterious crimelord known only as “The Commodore”, who sends them to the ’49er California gold fields on a mission of revenge. 

The Sister Brothers flows along like some of my favorite novels, with a picaresque open moving episodically from one absurd situation to another, as the brothers slowly make their way to the California gold fields.  Once there, characters and motivations established, the tone of the novel changes, and we see the brothers’ fate unfold before us.  The book is by turns funny and tragic, as a good tale should be.  Set a decade before the Civil War, it is set in a refreshingly different space and time, close enough to the traditional western to be easily understood, but with just enough difference to stand out from the pack.

I started this blog to find the perfect western.  The Sisters Brothers isn’t quite it, but it is good enough to make me believe that the perfect western is still out there, waiting to be found.

Prairie Home Companion: Lives of the Liberal Cowboys

National Public Radio is a constant in my home on the weekends, and once Car Talk and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me play, the radio just stays on through Prairie Home Companion.  It’s a show that I find annoying as often as I find it interesting, but one recurring sketch that always gets me is Lives of the Cowboys.

Lives of the Cowboys is about two middles aged, English major cowboys, Lefty and Dusty, who ride across the wide open prairie ruminating on love, life, and the difficulty of being liberal cowboys.  In a recent episode, the two cowboys were riding into Texas to renew their cowboy license, which apparently modern cowboys must do every ten years.

“What are you worried about, Dusty?” asked Lefty.

“I’m worried about riding into to Texas with a guy named Lefty carrying an ACLU card!” said Dusty.

“Don’t worry, Dusty, ACLU is my Arizona Cowboy Life Underwriting policy card.”

Once in Texas, the two line up for their cowboy tests, consisting of the "Six S"es- Sweat, Spit, Saunter, Squat, Stand Your Ground, and Saloon Fight.  All goes well until Lefty hits Saloon Fight, at which point he comes face to face with an honest to god Valkyrie, complete with a winged helmet, breast plate, and mad mezzo soprano opera skillz.  Mayhem and lust ensue, as it often does, leaving Lefty with a broken heart. 

There is something great about introspective, literate, hetero life mate cowboys riding the range, talking philosophy, and getting into adventures.  In fact, gather round the fire, younker, and let me tell you about the time that Thomas Jefferson and me invaded England…

Caine's Reckoning: Oh So Rugged

I do a lot of my "reading" with audiobooks.  Usually I will spend months debating the merits of a particular book, reading reviews, listening to sample chapters, then buy something completely different on the spur of the moment.  This is how I came to download Caine's Reckoning by Sarah McCarty from Audible. 

Caine's Reckoning is the first of the Hell's Eight books, an ongoing romance series about tough cowboys and gunslingers with manly hands and sensitive hearts in a part of Texas called Hell's Eight.  At least I think that is what the series is about.  Mostly I just keep coming across descriptions of cowboys with tough manly hands which stray over the supple skin of emotionally wounded women who are not at all whores despite their past professions as prostitutes.

Perhaps this is what I should have expected going into this book.  In my opinion a good western should contain at least a few scenes appropriate for "adult westerns" between shootouts and high adventure, so a book specifically called an "erotic adventure" with a pistol packing cowboy on the cover seemed like a good idea.  The novel did open in a ruggedly adventurous way, but moved quickly into long detailed descriptions of how dangerous, honorable, and rugged the main characters and his compañeros are.  I listened to the big seduction scene while on a long run, and by mile six of the run the hero was just getting around to rubbing his manly and rugged thumb over the heroine's sensitive feminine core- what the heck, McCarty comes right out and calls it her pussy, so I guess I can say that, too.  That is a lot of slow buildup for my tender sensitivities on a run.  Did I mention how rugged they all are?

While Caine's Reckoning isn't going to be my perfect western, I can see where this series would be popular.  McCarty certainly can write, giving her characters and setting life.  It may not be overly original, but folks who like their cowboys running rough yet tender hands over their heroines will probably enjoy this book.