Welcome to my humble blog that beats the drum for the worlds I create out of my head and a mess of research as befits a historian with 50 some non-fiction volumes on publishers' reading lists. This blog is a bit more casual than my other Web stuff that tends to beg for the imprimatur of fellow historians and non-fiction readers who hang on the details that, when stitched together, create characters from real life and events that actually happened. Do not get me wrong, however. Many of the characters, places and events that appear in my fiction really did shape our history.
For example, the "Great Burn-out of 1910" featured in the Legend of REO Grande, the introductory story to the first series of four books, did occur and was a giant prairie fire at least as destructive as portrayed in my story. The same goes for the details of the period where our unlikely heros, Dixie and Sonny Jim pursue their improbable dreams. That time in the new 20th Century was also the launching pad for the new feminism with head-strong, smart, worldly and adventursome women began taking their place on our cultural stage. Clementine Booker is a combination of some of those pioneer feminists. For the boys, her infiltration into their manly world was a thunder clap of good fortune -- though they were hard pressed to see it at the time.
I also love trains and nothing gets my blood up faster than the operation of a narrow guage logging railroad winding through the great forests of the Northwest. Our Daring Clementine, the second book of the series sends the boys and their female sidekick and biographer off to the damp heights of Washington state to help out an old employer, Snoose MacDonald who has a lumber lease under seige by a wealthy lumber baron. Nothing is more exciting than the ancient steam engines chugging over shaky wood trestles high above rock-filled gorges battling ambushes and hordes of hired guns. There are twists to this story with court battles as well as gun fights -- and high above the woods and mountain peaks an early "aeroplane" makes its debut and the final outcome is a surprise for everyone.
Some of the last independent ranches of the west mingle their herds for a long train ride to the Chicago Stock Yards and ask Dixie and Sonny Jim to shepherd the cattle to the pens and bring back the sales money. Clementine is in New Jersey getting her pilot's license -- the 3rd woman in the U.S. to do so. The boys deliver the herds and foil an assasination of a Chicago mob boss Big Jim Colosimo in his Wabash Avenue restaurant. Their adventures also find Sonny Jim doing riding stunts for a movie company filming a silent western on Chicago's lake front. A Sioux Indian prostitute is rescued from a Colosimo brothel with the help of the largest pre-war aviation meet ever held flying from Chicago's Grant Park. No good deed goes unpunished as a gang of Chicago gangsters invade the boys' home town to face the last of the Old West gunslingers in The Battle of Bradley Station.
The REO Boys in Hollywood finds the trio helping the movie producer they worked with in Chicago who is being threatened by the Hollywood Patents Trust. These companies who monopolize the patents for much of the Hollywood film making industry in 1912 want to shut out all independent producers with licensing fees, lock-outs and distribution control. The "Trust," headed by inventor Thomas Edison and film manufacturer, George Eastman, relies on tough thugs to wreck studios and intimidate producers to get them to sign long term contracts. A ruthless law firm runs he Los Angeles operation. The boys try to stave off the toughs while lawyers wrestle with the California legislature in Sacremento and San Francisco. The war boils down to a battle in a near-by mountain film location. Truck loads of tough guys surround the film makers while Dixie, Sonny Jim and some about-to-be-famous western movie stars show their real cowboy skills. Clementine takes to the air again, diving into the battle only to find herself in the first aerial dog fight of her life with no way out other than victory or in flames.
The fifth book is a stand-alone novel, Kilgore's Colt. It is a story of second chances, of virtue turned sour and a struggle to regain values that were lost. And it's funny as a pair of mis-fit runaways -- a down-at-the-heels war veteran and a hard case teen ager -- come to grips with their inner grit as they are thrown togeher for mutual survival. It is also about the West and technology of 1912 bringing big life changes to the isolated rural commuities. Neighbors caught in the rush of progress hang on to old customs while embracing the encroaching modern world. The story is also about the erosion of gender stereotypes where men and women can step outside the boundaries of society's expectation. Sometimes with a good horse, a six-gun, and a repeating rifle.
Please enjoy these stories. They are all good reads with characters drawn from real life and plunked down in the years before World War I when technology was gaining ground, but old virtues like honor, keeping one's word, and siding your pal when he or she needed you was never in doubt.
No comments:
Post a Comment