A Lean Year, and Other Stories

Written when author Laxalt was a young writer, these stories evoke the 1950s both in their subject matter and their attitude. These are not stories written for the little literary magazines but the popular publications of an earlier time, when TV was still something new and the movies were mostly family fare. Laxalt's audience would have found his stories in the Saturday Evening Posts and the men's magazines of the time, and his readers would have been well entertained. The 16 stories in this collection are set chiefly in the author's home state, Nevada, but they show a wide range of interests, character types, and styles of storytelling. There is humor, sentiment, drama, action, and satire, often ending with an unexpected twist. A few are stories about hunting and pursuit. In one of these a prison guard apprehends an escaped convict and then finds himself in a helpless dilemma. There are two fascinating stories about gambling. In one of them, the title story of the collection, a rancher with a $3,000 check in his wallet finds himself fatally drawn into a Reno casino. In another, a man tries to catch a cheating blackjack dealer. Most of these stories seem not to have been published before. The author's preface recalls a rejection letter for the story "The Snake Pen," from the editor of Esquire, who considered it not "digestible" by the magazine's readers. Describing a woman's marriage to a garage mechanic who has a curious way with rattlesnakes, it holds up fifty years later among the best of the whole bunch. As a companion volume to this book, I'd recommend Edward Abbey's "The Brave Cowboy," which evokes a similar time and place and style of storytelling.