Go West, Young Man

Looking for a good book?

Then welcome once again to Lindenhurst Patch’s . Twice a month the Lindenhurst Memorial Library (LML) will search its extensive collection, consult the bestseller lists and provide a list of good reads designed to pique your interest.

This week Director talks about the Western genre of American novels.

Missed his discussion of selection for 2011, Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain? Visit the .

The Western is a uniquely American literary genre. The story is very often secondary to the setting, the 19th-century American West. The characters are typically cowboys, frontiersman, outlaws, ranchers, miners, settlers and Native Americans.

Although set in the American West, the appeal of this genre is worldwide, based on the dream of freedom in a world of unspoiled nature in which the good guys always win in an epic battle with evil villains of all kinds.

The following titles are just a few of the best that the Western genre has to offer the reader:

• Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The Ox-Bow Incident (1940): The murder of a cowboy sends a vigilante group on a frenzied hunt to track down the killer in a wrenching, powerful re-creation of life, death, justice and mob violence on the Western frontier.
• Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage (1912): Refusing to marry the grim, brutal Elder Tull, Jane Withersteen is dismayed when her Utah ranch and hired hands are targeted in retaliation, and the mysterious gunfighter Lassiter offers Jane protection and a chance at love.
• Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985): Based on incidents that took place in the southwestern United States and Mexico around 1850, this novel chronicles the crimes of a band of desperados, with a particular focus on one, "the kid," a boy of fourteen. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
• Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove (1985): Set in the late-19th century, this novel chronicles a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, and follows the lives of Gus and Call, the cowboys heading the drive. Winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
• Jack Schaeffer, Shane (1949): A family of settlers take a mysterious stranger into their home in Wyoming in 1889, who then becomes involved in a feud between a cattle rancher and the local homesteaders.
• Owen Wister, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (1902): This classic tells the story of the Wyoming ranch foreman known only as the Virginian, his courtship of school teacher Molly Starwood and his encounters with the murdering cattle rustler, Trampas.

You can search for and reserve these books online at the LML website, and check them out at the library at One Lee Avenue.