Review: A larger version of The West
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 11, 2013
There aren't that many collections of stories out there showing easy friendships between backs and whites in the period after the Civil War, or touching on topics such as abuse, treating women as equals, racism, sociopathy, or Native Americans who speak Standard English instead of grunting. Yet this collection of short stories has all of that.One of the reasons the Western died as a genre is because it seemingly had nothing more to say. The world was no longer interested in the old tropes of an all-white, mostly male world that didn't include all of the people of the Western period and never existed in the first place. The collection, however, not only brings us back to the era when the Western Pulp was king, but opens up the world of the Old West to include saloon girls who really are working girl, early moves towards integration (yes, the Old West wasn't all white) and lawmen who can be just as hard and violent ad the criminals they chase. The shout-out to Marshal Dillon and his pals from Gunsmoke was also a nice bonus.