Bøger af Elmer Kelton

Hewey Calloway has a problem. In his West Texas home of 1906, the land and the way of life that he loves are changing too quickly for his taste.Hewey dreams of freedom - he wants only to be a footloose horseback cowboy, endlessly wandering the open range. But the open range of his childhood is slowly disappearing: land is being parceled out, and barbed-wire fences are springing up all over. As if that weren't enough, cars and other machines are invading Hewey's simple cowboy life, stinking up the area and threatening to replace horse travel. As Hewey struggles against the relentless stream of progress, he comes to realize that the simple life of his childhood is gone, that a man can't live a life whose time has passed, and that every choice he makes - even those that lead to happiness - requires a sacrifice.

In this novel, first published by Doubleday in 1985, Texas novelist Ehner Kelton returns to the Civil War period, once again examining, as he first did in Texas Rifles, the effect of the war on Texans at home. Even while the conflict raged to the east, several groups of Texan Union loyalists hid out across the state, trying to avoid the anger and violence of the confederate sympathizing home guard. Kelton bases this story on a group who lived in a then-huge thicket on the Colorado River near present day Columbus, although the characters, incidents and town of the book are of Kelton's invention. As he always says, fiction writers are liars and thieves. Owen Danforth, a wounded Confederate soldier, comes home to Texas to recover, intending to return to his regiment. His family is torn apart by the war -- two brothers dead, one uncle, a Union sympathizer, shot in the back by the home guard. His father -- also a Unionist -- hides out in the thicket with his remaining family because the home guard, led by Captain Phineas Shattuck, has sworn revenge on the Danforth clan. Torn between duty and family loyalty, Owen Danforth faces difficult decisions until a violent encounter leaves him only one choice.

West Texas horse trader Donley Bannister has killed a thug who had stolen one of his horses. Texas Ranger Andy Pickard is to find and arrest Bannister, and bring him to trial. But the case turns out to be anything but routine.

As a slave, Isaac Jefford went to war and saved the life of his master, Major Lytton. As a free man, Isaac became one of the major's top cowhands, respected - but never totally accepted - by fellow cowboys: when they gathered around the fire to eat their dinners, Isaac took his food and sat on the wagontongue alone. When Pete Runyan, a bitter southerner, joins the crew, Isaac has to swallow his rage more than once. But then Pete and Isaac are assigned the task of getting cash - profits from the sale of the herd - safely to the Fort Worth bank before a foreclosure deadline. Time and three gunmen on their trail are against them, and their journey becomes a race to prove who is the best man. The novel grew from a short story, included in this volume, along with a foreword in which Kelton explains the background of the story and the transition it made from short story to novel.

Some who treasure Elmer Kelton's novels - Time It Never Rained, The Good Old Boys, Slaughter and over thirty other titles - may not realize that he led another professional life as a livestock journalist. For forty-two years, he wrote fiction by night and traveled West Texas by day to report on livestock auctions, range conditions, and rodeo results. To those who know him as the retired associate editor of Livestock Weekly, his novels are less important than his knowledge of ranching. This nonfiction collection, assembled with Kelton's enthusiastic cooperation, shows the connection between his separate careers. Here are the causes that interest him and the themes that run through his fiction - environmental issues, agricultural developments, the history of West Texas and its ranching lands, the sport of rodeo, the craft of writing. Here, too, are the profiles and reminiscences of ranching people who give him ideas - and character hints - for his fiction, the bits of history that spark new novels.

In this novel, first published by Doubleday in 1985, Texas novelist Elmer Kelton returns to the Civil War period, once again examining, as he first did in Texas Rifles, the effect of the war on Texans at home. Even while the conflict raged to the east, several groups of Texan Union loyalists hid out across the state, trying to avoid the anger and violence of the confederate-sympathizing "home guard." Kelton bases this story on a group who lived in a then-huge thicket on the Colorado River near present-day Columbus, although the characters, incidents and town of the book are of Kelton's invention. As he always says, fiction writers are liars and thieves. Owen Danforth, a wounded Confederate soldier, comes home to Texas to recover, intending to return to his regiment. His family is torn apart by the war--two brothers dead, one uncle, a Union sympathizer, shot in the back by the home guard. His father--also a Unionist--hides out in the thicket with his remaining family because the home guard, led by "Captain" Phineas Shattuck, has sworn revenge on the Danforth clan. Torn between duty and family loyalty, Owen Danforth faces difficult decisions until a violent encounter leaves him only one choice.

In the early days of the Texas panhandle, starting a new life is hard--but keeping it is even harder.Espy Norwood is a troubleshooter who's got troubles of his own--and more troubles find him when he lands a job on a ranch on the Texas plains. Bitter landowners plot against him, determined cattle thieves sneak right under his nose, and his own son refuses to trust or even know him. Can he catch the thieves, save the ranch, and win his son's love?

"One thing is certain," a reviewer in True West Magazine recently said, "as long as there are writers as skillful as Elmer Kelton, Western literature will never die."Few would disagree with the assessment of the man whose peers voted the "Best Western writer of all time" and whose 50 novels form a testament and tribute to the American West. But who is that Texas gentleman with the white Stetson and rimless eyeglasses whose friendly face appears on so many book jackets?Sandhills Boy is Kelton's memoir, a funny and poignant story of "a freckle-faced country boy, green as a gourd, a sheep ready to be sheared," growing up in the wild, dry, sandhills of West Texas. The son of a working cowboy and ranch foreman, Elmer was expected to follow in father's footsteps but learned at an early age that he had no talents in the cowboy's trade. Buck Kelton called Elmer "Pop," said he was "slow as the seven-year itch," and reluctantly supported his son's decision to become a student at the University of Texas, and, eventually, a journalist and writer.Kelton's life in ranch and oil patch Texas during the Great Depression is told with warm nostalgic humor animated with stories of the cowboys and their wives and kids who gave the time and place its special flavor. He writes with great feeling of his service in WW2 in France, Germany, and Czechoslovakia, and the romantic circumstances in which his life changed in the village of Ebensee, Austria.

The Good Old Boys and The Smiling Country pairs two wonderful novels by one of the most honored of all western writers, Elmer KeltonThe Good Old BoysHewey Calloway has a problem. He wants to be a footloose cowboy, endlessly wandering the land on horseback, but the open range of his childhood is slowly disappearing. Land is being parceled out, barbed-wire fences are springing up all over, and cars are replacing the horse as a mode of transportation. Swimming against the tide of "progress," Hewey begins to understand that the time of the cowboy is over, that the life he dreams of has become part of the past. He must find a new path to happiness-one that may require a great sacrifice.The Smiling CountryIt is now 1910 and Hewey Calloway's freewheeling life is coming to an end-the fences, trucks, and automobiles he hates are even creeping in to remote Alpine in the "smiling country" of West Texas. When he is badly injured trying to break a renegade horse, Hewey's regrets over his lost love, schoolteacher Spring Renfro haunt him as he sees the loneliness that awaits him. The Smiling Country is filled with humor, love, and the lore of the cowboy life at a time when the great, free, open ranges of the West were adjusting to a new, technological era.

Irishman Doug Monahan runs a fencing crew outside the south Texas town of Twin Wells, digging post-holes and stringing red painted barbed wire for ranchers as protection against wandering stock, rustlers, and land hungry thugs.Monahan's fencing operation is opposed by Captain Andrew Rinehart, a former Confederate officer and an old-school open range baron of the huge R Cross spread. With his brutal foreman, Archer Spann, assigned to the violent work, Rinehart wages a barbed wire war against Doug Monahan. And neither side takes prisoners!

Texas Ranger Andy Pickard, newly married and unsure of himself and his choice of career, is given what appears to be a routine assignment: find and arrest a horse trader named Donley Bannister who is accused of murder. The difficulty begins after Andy locates Bannister's West Texas hideout and is shot by one of the trader's cohorts. In an ironic twist, Bannister saves the ranger's life by taking him to a cow camp where his wound can be treated. Then Bannister disappears.This routine assignment gets even more complicated after Andy heals well enough to ride and follows the trader's young wife, hoping she will lead him to her husband. Near Fort Concho the ranger's mission is interrupted when Bannister is shot and left for dead by an outlaw who takes Geneva Bannister hostage and brutally assaults her. Even after Bannister is apprehended, danger lurks; one of the trader's enemies is determined to ambush the ranger and his prisoner. From the experience, Andy Pickard learns a valuable lesson: nothing stirs emotions in Texas as men stealing other men's horses.

In Massacre at Goliad, tensions mount between Mexican authorities and American newcomers. Revolution is in the air, something Thomas Buckalew welcomes but his brother Joshua fears, since Joshua is in love with a Mexican girl. The story touches on the immortal battle of the Alamo but centers on the infamous Goliad massacre, and ultimately the decisive battle of San Jacinto, which made Texas an independent republic.After the Bugles begins where Massacre at Goliad ends-on the battlefield at San Jacinto. Joshua Buckalew tries to put the pieces back together but finds that starting over in the aftermath of war can be as challenging as the war itself. The racial differences that helped foment the conflict have not gone away. And Texas finds that being an independent republic can be more difficult than being a colonial extension of Mexico.

Ranger's Law brings together the fourth, fifth, and sixth of Elmer Kelton's novels on the formative years of the Texas Rangers. Kelton's young heroes, Rusty Shannon, and one-time Comanche captive, Andy Pickard, fight Indians, outlaws, feuding ranchers, smugglers, and all manner of lawbreakers while trying to make lives for themselves in the tumult of post-Civil War Texas. In Ranger's Trail it is 1874 and retired Texas Ranger Rusty Shannon is urged to rejoin the force to assist in protecting settlers from Indian raids and outlaw bands. After the girl he loves dies, Rusty goes on a vengeance trail, determined to find and kill the man who has ruined his life. But the trail Rusty is following may lead him to an innocent man.Texas Vendetta takes the young ranger Andy Pickard into the midst of a hate-filled and bloody post-Civil War feud between two Texas families. Pickard, who survived a childhood as a Comanche captive called "Badger Boy," also becomes involved with the young son of an outlaw, a boy who has been "adopted" by the rangers at their San Saba River camp, earning his way as a cook's helper. The boy's father, now released from prison, comes to take his son back, and into a life on the run.In Jericho's Road, Andy Pickard is assigned to the Texas-Mexico border and finds an ominous notice on the edge of a great tract of ranch land above the Rio Grande: "This is Jericho's Road. Take the Other." The sign signifies Jericho Jackson's land and Jackson is at war with a similarly ruthless cattle baron on the Mexican side of the river, Guadalupe Chavez. The two rustle each others' cattle, raiding and killing on both sides of the border, heading for a bloody showdown -- with the Texas Rangers standing between them.

In Lone Star Rising, Elmer Kelton ("A Texas Legend," according to Texas Governor Rick Perry), brings together the first three books of his acclaimed Texas Ranger saga.The Buckskin Line introduces Rusty Shannon, the red-haired Comanche captive rescued and adopted by Mike Shannon, who is a member of a Texas "ranging company" that protects settlers from Indian raids. In the throes of the War Between the States, Rusty joins the Rangers and searches for the renegades who killed his adoptive father.In Badger Boy, the Rangers are disbanded and Rusty returns to his home on the Red River only to discover that the girl he loves has married another. In a time of personal turmoil as well as the post-war uphheaval in Texas, Rusty's childhood returns to haunt him as he rescues Andy Pickard, called Badger Boy by his Comanche captors.Andy and Rusty ride together in the newly reformed Rangers in The Way of the Coyote, in a time when Texas is overrun with outlaws, Confederate raiders, Ku Klux Klansmen, and marauding Comanches.

Kelton continues the story of the Lewis family and the formative years of the Lone Star state in this second installment of the saga of early Texas.