Wyoming Books

As a former deputy sheriff in the nowood valley, Ten Sleep, Wyoming, I found Mr. Davis' research and presentation outstanding. His descriptions and evaluations were right on the money. As a critical history buff, I was pleasantly surprised to find no faults or criticisms of Mr. Davis' work. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in historical jurisprudence. Things might have changed in "crime detection/investigation" but in the courtroom? not so much.

Wyoming looms large for me, and I've alluded to a recent film about Wyoming "cowboys" in other reviews. Attorney John Davis, from somewhere in the Big Horn Basin, discusses events of 2 April 1909 that put the cowboy canard in its place. Those movie cowboys aren't cowboys because they're all hat and no cattle. They're sheepherders. So were Joe Allemand, shot to death on 2 April 1909, and Joe Enge, murdered and burned in his sheep wagon on Spring Creek.

Spring Creek was the last big battle of the western sheep wars, writes Mr. Davis, and was the first (only) Wyoming raid in which killers of sheepherders were convicted of murder. The murderers of Allemand, Emge, and another herder, burned to death with Emge in his wagon, were real cowboys acting out a drama that was a tragedy of the commons. Much of Wyoming even in 1909 was unfenced open range to which cattlemen claimed rights of preemption. Sheep and their crazy herders (cowboys debated overwhelming questions: Were men already crazy before they herded sheep, or were they made crazy by the sheep they herded?) were latecomers who competed for grass and water in a dry state. Sheep wrecked the range for cattle, eating grass down to the ground and then eating the ground. Then they'd bleat and excrete, wrecking water holes. In the Big Horn Basin commons, cattlemen and cowboys tolerated sheep and sheepherders as long as they knew their place. Where there were no fences, cattlemen helpfully drew deadlines, invisible lines in the sand beyond which sheep were not allowed to cross. Allemand and Emge crossed the line.

Allemand was foreign. Some accounts say he was Baszue; Davis writes that he was French. Allemand was an alien in an occupation dominated by Mexicans and Basques whose lives had been cheap. Mr. Allemand, though, was liked and respected by his neighbors despite being from somewhere else and despite sheep. Nobody wrote that he was crazy. Emge was foreign, but had been respected because he had been a cattleman before going to the dark side, sheep. He did not know his place. He kept his bovine arrogance despite turning to a disreputable occupation, sheep, and he openly disrespected his old cowboy cronies and their deadline. Emge, of course, represented something new under the hot Wyoming sun: old certitudes were dying. Wyoming, as territory and state, had run cattle and had been run by cattle. But Wyoming in the new 20th Century was born again; by 1909 Wyoming sheep were worth more than Wyoming cattle, and even founding fathers like cattle kings F.E. Warren & J.M. Carey were changing with the times. By 1909 cattle kings were running sheep.

That's the context of the story Mr. Davis tells. It's the story of an insular area, almost inbred, that was almost ripped apart by the aftermath of an atavistic raid. Davis excerpts Grand Jury transcripts that show communities and neighbors being pushed and pulled by the old and the new. He tells a story far more interesting than the fey fable that was nominated today for eight Academy Awards.

The Virginian was the inspiration for The Shopkeeper. The inspiration didn't come from the main character of the novel, but from the life of Owen Wister, the author of this classic. Originally published in 1902, Wister visited the Old West in the late nineteenth century and wrote from personal experience.

Although the Virginian can be a somewhat difficult read today, I liked it because Wister wrote from the personal experiences he recorded in his journal. I've never seen the journal, but I've read editor's excerpts that refer to incidents in the book, like the baby-swapping episode. I also read that his editors made him revise the final gunfight because it might offend the squeamish. Too bad. For someone reared on Louis L'Amour, the ending comes across as anticlimactic.

Most people are unaware that The Virginian was a runaway bestseller in its day. The book not only set the parameters for the Western genre, it's still considered a literary work that shows that tales of the Old West can be art.

If you'd like a great companion book, try Mark Twain's Roughing It (Mark Twain Library). If you want to get a feel for the comraderiship and ethos of the Old West, these books will not disappoint you.
The Shut Mouth Society

VIRGINIAN -by Owen Wister ( first reviewed 30 April 2006)

Though "The Virginian" has a standing as a Western novel, it is philosophically rich, and Owen Wister used this novel to articulate certain fundamental truths. (I always find great clarification from older books, books written before TV, before Computers, and even before Radio. In these, one can still find clarification of values, that is not easily found in modern literature, when those who write books don't know the difference between "Come!" and "Go sic'em!" ) Wister's book is not just a "shoot'em-up". The reader needs to be aware of the depth of the philosophical arguments offered by his characters

(1)
the definition of a "gentleman" (in Chapter Two)

(2)
the conflict between GOOD (the Virginian) & EVIL (Trampas, the cowhand turned rustler and worse, corrupter of men, resulting in their destruction

(3)
the definition of "love" ; NOT the romantic love between the school teacher and the cowboy. Rather, it was the love the Virginian showed to his fellow cowhand, vulnerable to manipulation and deceit, in trying to shepherd the man's soul along the lines of the soul's deepest strengths (the Judge's hired hand who loved horses).

(4)
the definition of "spirituality"; Wister draws a stark contrast between the traveling preacher, who wears his religious "act" like a cheap black suit and poorly conceals his contempt of common men in his arrogance and superiority complex.
Moreover, Chapter Two demonstrates the essential requirement of HUMILITY that the Virginion manifests (a character trait utterly lacking in the minister).

(5)
the definition of "conflict": indeed, the entire book is about the very human fight at the very core of life. The Virginian demonstrates the singular truth, clear to anyone who actually engages life, that you cannot find an answer to life's conflict by simply turning away and riding out of town. There is no answer to life's problems in mere "conflict-avoidance", nor in folding our hands and practicing some NAMBY-PAMBY sentiment passing under the guise of LOVE.

When The Virginian beats the stuffing out of one of the most despicable of human beings (the abuser of horses) he demonstrates the timelessness of the truth, that good people must stand for something. Even today, deceit and lies have been popularized so that one often hears admonitions, suggesting that we should all practice, "NON-JUDGEMENT." That only bears out, if you choose to embrace ideological horse-flop as life's dearest treasure.

Some fights must be fought, though we do not enjoy them. The EVIL that Trampas represents, will not back down, in its mindlessness. Riding away simply turns over the reins of power to the embodiment of EVIL.

(6)
the definition of "humor": (I cannot spoil the story but...the CHICKEN, the DRUMMERS, the railroad ride after the cattle sale)
There are numerous accounts demonstrating how good people find humor at every chance, and who use humor and imagination to fight evil in everyday circumstances.

(7) DUTY: As Foreman of the Judge's ranch, the Virginian endures many slights and insults to his authority by a "top hand" or two. Not once does he inform the Judge of these difficulties. Why? Because performing his duty includes these things. It is his job; and the Virginian performs his duty as a worthy hand.


The Virginian was written by Wister to a deep purpose, so deep in fact, that I believe it was largely lost on the world. True, it was made into many movies, but even in these, even the great ones, the TRUTHS Wister elaborate in the book are vastly watered down. You cannot acquire Wister's purpose merely by watching a movie. You can only find them in the book.

The book, in the wording of an older era, may seem awkward, perhaps ...slow; but I suggest you think of it as a foray into another place, the Wyoming of a hundred years ago, with vast prairies of open sky, only rarely interrupted by a human dwelling, and more rarely still, by a town. Words then, were a relief from the prairie, which alternates from being vastness of eerie silence, punctuated by violence.

In certain ways, Wister eclipses Melville's "Moby Dick". He was not credited with being the literary giant that Melville enjoys in literary history, but in my opinion, he arrived at a deeper point, and quicker. Melville's characters are melodramatic and driven, often as not, by superstition and wild, incomprehensible urges. Wister's characters are driven by a more familiar greed, a more familiar goodness, a more familiar treachery, an everyday ordinariness, if you will.

When Melville gives his characters something to contend with, they must contend with the ultimate superwhale, Moby Dick, or, it is the strange obsessive madness of the captain. These are less often encountered by people generally, in any age. Wister's evil is not, like Melville's, the Arch-Evil of some cartoonish melodrama. Wister's evil is the cattle rustler, driven by personal selfishness, and a contempt for common values. In my opinion, there is more of a lesson for us in Wister's presentation of evil as more of an everyday, and an ordinary thing, in an ordinary humanity.

There is a foreshadowing in Wister's novel, of a theme exploited to great success by Louis L'Amour half a century later: the notion of a cowhand, who has vaguely ridden on the wrong side of the law. From the start, we become aware that the Virginian is not a "saint". He is a man molded by hard living in the American West. Somewhere on Life's road, a choice was made to care for people, and not merely to steal from others to advance self. Wister's rejection of EGO-CENTRISM as a basis for living is clear. Duty to principle is the honorable alternative.

****** The ACADEMICS and their perspectives on the Virginian*********


There have been some academics who have written prefaces, introductions, and essays about the Virginian, and their natty-brained intellectualizations frequently seem to dominate the public's understanding of the Western, and Wister's tale.

Here's where they go wrong. Writing from the concrete castles of academia, these academics are far removed from the realities of life, especially from the world Wister showed us. Academics operate in an abstract realm of ideas, where they assure themselves that human conflict (and even violence) are all a thing of the past, and that their wordy perambulations have encompassed all that is known of man. After all, they tell us with great bluster and probity that the cowboy and his myth have vanished. That may be so; but what has never changed in life is CONFLICT. It was not removed when TV was invented.

There are those who afford themselves the privilege of scoffing at defining good and evil. These are people who are not engaged in the struggle. They are the spectators in life, and that is why we must guard carefully to never let such tell us how we ought to think and act. Invariably, they will discourage all action.
by this philosophy, a cynical and skeptical view is proper, and inaction is the order of the day.

Wister's Virginian, shows where a man's duty lies, and how he ought to go about conducting himself in facing conflict. The cowboy may be gone, but human conflict is always with us.

Though literary critics advance Mark Twain or Nabokov or Melville or some such as authors of The Great American Novel, for me, it will always be The VIRGINIAN. --Bruce Bain

Old West showman William 'Buffalo Bill' Cody was more than just a notorious outlaw: he was a land developer, town promoter, and showman. WILLIAM F. CODY'S WYOMING EMPIRE: THE BUFFALO BILL NOBODY KNOWS is a blend of history and biography especially suitable for college-level American history collections focusing on frontier times: it surveys his life, offers over twenty photos, and considers the reality behind the character. An engrossing, different portrait stands out from the crowd of books on Cody's life and career.

Buffalo Bill Cody was America's first celebrity and probably the best advertised name in the world at the time his Wild West Show took to feeding Americans a comforting myth about its conquest of the west. He was a double impostor who aspired to turn his iconic image as an heroic frontiersman into status as a capitalist of consequence.

The book deals with Cody's concerted but ineffectual quest to develop his own corner of Wyoming. Although he was a big name and tireless promoter, his enterprises were doomed by his lack of real business skill or follow-through, exacerbated by his rock star travel schedule and his choice of the arid Big Horn Basin as the place he would will his empire into being.

Cody was not a con artist so much as a show business artist, with emphasis on the show, not the business. Though his show made him rich enough to put him with East Coast aristocrats, Cody sought to earn their company on a higher footing. In this respect, he prefigured today's calculating and self-inflating celebrities, particularly Schwarzenegger the body builder and Trump the bankrupt developer.

In later years, Cody's influence grew weaker as the government bureaus he sought to exploit moved from political patronage to professional management, and real businessmen backed by serious capital came in with the railroads.

Bonner is a fine writer, but his subject is probably too narrow for readers without a stake in the west or an interest in western history. He purposely avoids the well-documented Wild West side of Cody to tell a less celebrated tale of attempts to settle public lands, and in particular, the importance of bringing water into the region.

Cody's story ends with corporate interests and eastern capital opening much of the west and sweeping aside, if need be, the rugged individualists who are enshrined in western mythology -- whether they were dry dirt farmers or the most famous man in the world.

I too grew up in Wyo. and this book features one of the most interesting cross-sections of the rugged individuals that live there. I purchased it because my brother is featured in it (horseshoer, p. 130), but my friends and family are fascinated by it. It is a featured "coffee-table" book in our home.

The pictures were excellent and the stories, for the most part were quite interesting. If you've ever wondered what life in Wyoming is REALLY like, you must read this book.

A very readable memoir; well written. Good bits of real life in the years around 1900. Some good humor as well. It gave me a feel of the time as I read.

Born in 1871, Edward J. Farlow left his Iowa home at the age of fifteen to follow the life of a cowboy in Wyoming Territory. This colorful tale is footnoted with historical documentation that will delight and surprise the reader. The author includes history capsules of the Hollywood film industry, the government's attempts to "tame" the Shoshone and Arapahoe Indians, his experiences with Native Americans at a time when they were being "reservationed" and his interesting accounts of cattle ranching as it blossomed in Fremont County. WIND RIVER ADVENTURES brings to life an era of misunderstanding, great promise and what would eventually become the western way of life. It takes the reader through territorial times, statehood for Wyoming and the plight of two small tribes of Native American Indians as seen through the eyes of an adopted son of the Arapahoe Tribe. As a memoir this is a great read and as a reference tool it is well-documented and very well indexed. I recommend this book to any person interested in western history.

I just couldn't put it down. Wonderful book!

As with all the books in this series I was drawn in from the start.
I very much enjoyed the whole "Hearts of Wyoming" series. It makes
you want to be a part of this family.

Ms. Temte writes such wonderful books that leave the reader feeling as if anything can happen!! I have read the whole Hearts of Wyoming series and they have not disappointed!! What a wonderful series from a wonderful author!!

Ed Bryant brings an elegance and texture to his short fiction that one usually assigns to the "serious" contemporary writers.

That he has chosen to work in the realm of the speculative is the rich gain of genre fiction fans everywhere. Bryant's stories, set in his adoptive home state, are sometimes unsettling, sometimes wondrous, but always populated with people who live, breathe, love and feel pain. Take a trip with him to Wyoming, and you'll never feel quite the same about the West or the human heart again.

Wyoming Sun is an excellent collection of hard-to-classify short stories. The stories range from folksy to futuristic and all are based in Wyoming's sometimes inhospitable and always changing wild terrain. This collection is a must-have for any resident of Wyoming and any serious collector of speculative fiction.

Wow! This was wonderful. I could hardly wait to read
the story about Grace. I wasn't disappointed.

As with all the books in this series I was drawn in from the start.
I very much enjoyed the whole "Hearts of Wyoming" series. It makes
you want to be a part of this family.

Another wonderful book in the Heart of Wyoming series!! When a movie crew comes to Sunshine Gap to film a movie, it turns Grace McBride's world upside down!! And only her true love could turn it back around!! Ms. Temte is such a talented author, her books keep you laughing, they make you cry, and they stay on the keeper shelf for years!!!!

Cattleman's daughter Rachel Tolliver believed that sheep ranchers like Luke Vincente had no business out on the open range. Yet despite his troubled past, he was an honorable man, driven by a passion for the west, and for her. But the range war brewing would surely forbid any declration of their wildfire love.

Rachel Tolliver's story takes place in 1901 when she is 22 years old.
She is the adopted daughter of Morgan Tolliver and Cassie [Wyoming Widow]- she is returning to the family ranch after spending 3 years in the East - taking art lessons?

This is cattle country. Wouldn't you know that she runs into a sheep man, Luke Vincente, or at least his sheep. Her old mule is traveling too fast? and she has no brakes and rather than tear through the flock of sheep crossing the road she ditches in a gully.
Yup! she is stuck in the mud and in the way of a gully washer.
Oh, yeah, some four miscreants are trying to drive the sheep over the steep side of the trail.
Luke has her hide in the rocks and while he and his dogs turn the sheep Rachel gets a look at one of the men[?] Was that one of her brothers? Jacob or Josh? a pair of twins about 18.

There is a lot of hype of emotions and distrust and hormones as Rachel slowly learns that her safe, secure world is not so safe anymore.

What would her parents say if she spent the night with Luke.
What were her brothers doing harassing a sheep herder and possibly causing the death of the old sheepherder.

Now we hear of the Tolliver family and their doings and are reaquainted with Chang's family and of course, the villians of the story.

Guess what? Ryan and his wife Molly show up to pull the family story together. Great story. excellent trilogy - another one coming??? in March 2006 - Wyoming Wildfire.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - You may really like this set.

The Wind River Range is spectacular and lonely, and this book takes you there -- nature, history, glorious photographs. I can't recommend it enough, both for the arm chair traveler and for the visitor to Wyoming.

Joe Kelsey's love letter to Wyoming's Wind River Range finally brings pictures to match the mountains. An acknowleged expert on the peaks and valleys of the Winds, his selection of photographs is perfect counterpoint to the crisp, slightly awestruck descriptions of the range. This is the perfect book for those long winter nights spent waiting for the mountains to open up again.