Best Little Stories of the Wild West: With "Fascinating Women of the West" by Ingrid Smyer

Anyone with an interest in the American West will want to check out this 2002 collection of short stories by C. Brian Kelly, who has done several other BEST LITTLE STORIES volumes. Kelly offers up over 80 vignettes on the American frontier in the 19th Century. There's something for everyone in this volume from Cumberland House. To my mind, the title BEST LITTLE STORIES FROM THE WILD WEST is a bit misleading. Its coverage is much wider, entries running from 1801 to 1896. The book is arranged chronologically, the first chapter - "First Explorations" - opening with a five-pager on Meriwether Lewis circa 1801. Lewis & Clark articles take up most of Chapter One, succeeding chapters being devoted to "Mountain Men and Texans," "Emigration, Wars and Gold," "Nation of Two Faces," "Cowboys & Indians, Lawmen & Outlaws," "Sliding into a New Century" and "Fascinating Women of the West." As might be expected, the book resounds with many famous westerners - Crockett, Bowie, Brigham Young, James Marshall, Black Bart, Sarah Winchester, Custer, John Wesley Powell and a few others not normally thought of as being of the West: Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, etc. Stories range from grizzly bear attacks to Christmas at an isolated fort, exploits of U.S. Army Apache scouts to accounts of an 1880s Kansas blizzard, shooting the Grand Canyon to the story of the Promontory Summit golden spike and so on. The nice thing about these BEST LITTLE STORIES books is that you can be read them straight through or jump in at any page for some interesting tidbit. In short, an interesting, entertaining and inexpensive introduction to the American West. Recommended.