The best western books to make your heart race with empathy and adventure

I saw a well-used copy of this book in the bunkhouse of real cowboys. That totally confirmed the way I felt–that this book is authentic. Yes, it has the feel of the mythical West I fell in love with as a girl, but it’s gritty and quirky, too.

Who would guess that Augustus, a tough-as-leather former Texas Ranger, would bring two pigs on a hundreds of miles-long cattle drive? Not for eating, but because he couldn’t leave those friendly pets behind. His heart is tender, though he’s tough as any Western man you ever imagined.

Whenever I (unwillingly) think of Blue Duck, I realize he is the worst literary villain I’ve ever read. Thinking of him gives me chills, just as thinking of Captain Call makes me reluctantly admire him. He is a man with foot-thick emotional armor, but his sense of honor is just as strong. Plus, he calls his favorite horse Hell Bitch, and she suits him.

When I taught Developmental Reading (aka English for Gang Members) in Los Angeles, this book made them cry.  Sad stories that include animals can jab straight into the most sheltered heart, while books about suffering humans only evoke yawns.

Reading this as an adult, it’s clearly NOT a horse story, but that’s its camouflage. There’s a lot of death in this book–a beloved pony, an old man with a stolen old horse, a mare giving birth, and the main character’s innocence. Childhood innocence dies over and over again. Just when his faith in what matters resurfaces, it gets smacked down again. The older I get, the more this book hurts.

Jody, the boy at the center of all 3 parts of the book (there are different versions of the book…some have 4 parts), wants to put the adults in his life on pedestals, but his father is as callous as the gang kids I taught, and the ranch hand who fights for Jody’s trust is ruthless in trying to earn it.

So why do I love this book? Yes, I like initiation stories, but more than that, it is beautifully written and takes place in the earlier days of Northern California, where I grew up. That beauty, familiarity, and pain create a sense of yearning that’s absolutely a flashback to adolescence.

This ranch-centered book puts a human face on the cost of war.

A best in the West (or at least his small Nevada town) bull rider is physically and mentally torn apart by war. He can’t see the future he envisioned for himself anymore. But the story is really about his younger brother, Cam. I love Cam’s humor most of all, but his devotion to his idolized big brother is what makes this more than a story about a skateboarder turned bull rider.   

This book is about family in an opposite way from The Red Pony it confirms the safety net family can provide. 

I’m still not satisfied with delayed gratification! In great words and pictures, this book sums up that rebellion against getting great stuff later. A little boy is repeatedly told he can ride a horse along with his cowgirl mom and rancher dad “someday.”

I grew up with chronic asthma that was aggravated by running, playing, dust, and horse hair. Doctors told me that I’d outgrow it "someday." That didn’t help. On television and in books, I soaked up the free-wheeling freedom of riding. And wanted it. I longed to ride so much that–like the boy in this book–my parents saw it was important. About once a month, my parents rented a horse that I could ride along the (now cement-lined) riverbeds of Southern California.

Yes, they’d be up all night with me, wheezing. No, they weren’t giving in to me. They satisfied my need to be myself–not a cowgirl, but someone who wanted to escape the confinement of asthma to the freedom of being high off the ground, riding into the winds of freedom, if just for a little while.

This book isn’t fiction, but it feels like it. I am wrapped in the reality of the frontier through letters, diaries, recipes, and great old photos–every time I pick it up. And that’s often.

I first gave this book to my mother, but my husband paged through it so many hours each time we visited that I gave him his own copy. Cooking on the trail, on cattle drives, in camps, and finally, on hardscrabble ranches and farms isn’t easy. The book is full of struggles, and I feel for the women who wrested survival out of the earth daily.

They write about being driven crazy by the relentless wind, shortages, and loneliness, but there are plenty of jolly–it’s the best word for their beaming faces–pictures. I love what those old photos show: an appreciation for nature, family, and farm animals, and their determination to have tea parties and make wine and brandy out of anything that came to hand!