New Frontiers #1

This is an excellent rendition of the original American West. It is set in a number of different locations pertinent to 17 or so stories. Typical tales are as follows: o The Querencia o Nature of the Beast o Dance Girl o Mc Intosh's Chute and a dozen or so others The language/diction is colloquial. The stories are interesting and topical for the period. Readers can empathize with the characters. The Mc Intosh's Chute is about a timber/ mining town where the local employer hires help at excellent wages. Saginaw Mc Intosh was the boss. He was an outstanding logger, although his productivity requirements were too considerable for the average logger. " He drove his crews hard, demanding that a dozen turns of logs go down his chute every day to feed the saws working twenty four hours at the mill. " A memorable passage reads, thusly; "When he went sailing over the tressle, he was a lump of fire as he shot down into the lower section.. then a fireball with a tail longer and brighter than the one on that comet, a while ago so bright that the river and the woods on both banks showed plain as day for 2 or 3 seconds before he smacked the river- smacked it and went in a splash and steamy sizzle you could see and hear all the way up at the chute head". This is clearly American Western belles lettres literature at its best. The book is an easy read and it's priced reasonably.