The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: Volume 1
The spate of previously uncollected L'Amour short stories that have surfaced recently reveal L'Amour's broad talent and ability to master every genre from mystery to sports to mainstream fiction. But when readers think of L'Amour, they still think westerns, fromHondo(1953) to the Sackett epics. This collection, the first in a multivolume set, focuses on the West ("the frontier stories"), and it is vintage L'Amour. "The Gift of Cochise" opens the collection with aHondo-like tale of a good man going to great lengths to protect the wife of a man he was forced to kill. A nameless drifter didn't have to confront the rustlers who threatened to take over his town, but after all, he was "Duffy's Man," and when you hired on, you did the tough work if you accepted the pay. L'Amour wrote about the big themes--love, courage, loyalty, honor--but he grounded them firmly in the context of daily struggles in an unforgiving land. A fine start to what will become an essential collection.Wes LukowskyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an alternateHardcoveredition.