Lonesome Land

I read this book over twenty-five years ago in my mother's collection of books that she bought as a young adult. Of all my mother's books, this one remains a vivid impression. Val gains depths the reader would not expect from the first shallow impression. Her husband's alcoholism and moral weakness are hard subjects for the early-century audience that Bower handles with a verity not often encountered. Yet my deepest etched memory is the love between Val and the hard-working honest cowboy she shuns at the first; he is impressed by her bravery alone in the cabin and her willingness to work hard to make a home in a shack when she expected a solid house, he wants to help her, he watches her struggle and transform, he realizes her husband is not worthy of her and he wants her for himself. Eventually he loves her with the kind of love she needs. This I remember to this day. The unexpected knight who replaces the prince of soft gold; the princess who realizes the difference between glitter and iron. These archetypes B.M. Bower worked with long before "archetypes" became a catch-word. She was writing good stories, better than good stories, and she deserves to remain in print based on this book alone. (Although the later Flying U book about the young man who goes to the rodeo to prove he's as much of a hero as his "wild west" father and uncles were is also as good).