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Reviews with images
Hit Can Be Did--But Why Bother?
This has to be the most boring Western ever written. At no point is it more interesting than a high school history lesson. The story follows a wagon train headed for Oregon. Along the way, the pioneers have brushes with Indians and Nature at its worst. They even get a bit of gold fever.If there are any main characters (this book is written in a very distant third person, giving the readers the feeling of watching a drama from a $20 seat in peanut heaven) are a young woman named Molly, not to be confused with the full-bodied mother of the same name, and two young suitors, each after young Molly's hand in marriage.From the get-go, her dad hates the good guy, mostly because the good guy is a better leader than he is. Though it is never made clear in the story, the good guy is (or maybe isn't) guilty of appropriating military supplies during the Mexican War. Anyway, the bad guy somehow has papers to prove good guy is a crook and uses them to bad-mouth the good guy to everyone in the wagon train. The girl naturally falls in love with the good guy, but, since she can't possibly marry a thief, agrees to marry the bad guy. Fortunately. she gets out of this--won't bore you with the details. Really. I won't. Good guy and bad guy lock horns or whatever half a dozen times in this story, but at no point does it ever get even vaguely interesting. Even the final boss fight is a sleeper. Hint: the good guy doesn't deliver the coup de grace. Major no-no in novel writing 101. Of the thousand clean ways to off this baddie, the one the author uses is the least savory--or stomach-able. Yipes! And the after-murder pep talk about making it legit doesn't help matters for readers with any moral qualms.Ah--the wagon train. How does one sympathize with this scourge? Manifest Destiny is not quite so ugly sounding a word as Lebensraum--but it means exactly the same thing. Forcing out the natives to make way for OUR people, because, after all, our people deserve it more than the "savages" who it technically belongs to.Mind you, this book was written in 1922. Don't expect enlarged views. Even so, the author's opinion of women is shamefully backward. I won't argue my point. I'll provide a quote from the book that will speak for me: "She alone, the white woman, most helpless of the great creatures, stood before the terror." Good grief! This helpless creature is sorry she wasted a whole weekend riding trail with you!One last complaint: the dialect in this book makes it almost unreadable in places. Thank God that is a thing of the past!
