100 books like Home on the Range

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… show more.

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… show more.

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… show more.

Punke’s book chronicles a story of heroism and company greed that isn’t that far in the past of America’s labor battles. It tells of a fire that spread through the underground tunnels of the copper mines belonging to J.D. Rockefeller’s Anaconda company and others. The book centers on the men trapped underground who exhaust every possible option in a dire bid to survive, including some ingenious methods and some which hasten their demise. Punke touches as well on political, labor, and business wranglings that put the workers at risk. He also follows Butte’s history to present day, demonstrating that the Montana city has never quite recovered from its past as a copper city.

Mark Twain is my writing idol. Before Roughing it, I’d never read a book written during the Civil War era which didn’t take sides and grind axes. From it, I learned detachment, that personal adventures can live side-by-side with even the most earth-shattering events. And that hilarious stories like “Bemis and the Buffalo” are the best antidote for the chaos and pain of war.

Once upon a time, writers could make a good living selling short stories to American magazines. Those days are almost as long gone now as the Wild West. But the stories live on…provided you find the right used book store. First published in 1957, The Hanging Tree and Other Stories collects some of the best work by a prolific specialist in short fiction about the frontier: Dorothy M. Johnson. Years before Little Big Man, she was writing sympathetically and convincingly about Native Americans. Her stories could also be funny, thrilling, and surprising. It’s no wonder Hollywood turned to her for inspiration so often: The classic Westerns The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and A Man Called Horse are based on Johnson stories.

Elmore Leonard wrote a ton of books, and almost all of them were darn good. He’s most famous for his more modern books, Get Shorty, etc. His stories are raw, edgy, and exciting. Toward the very end of his career, he did crank out some novels that were, I thought, junk. But for the most part, his writing is terrific, easy to read, page-turning books. What many don’t know is that when he was young, he was writing Westerns. And wow, what fabulous Westerns, too! If you’re lucky enough to get a copy of this collection, you’ll both love it, and feel kind of bad when you get to the end. One of the very best Western writers of them all.

The public was introduced to Wyatt Earp’s story by Walter Noble Burns and Stuart Lake around 1930, but the novelistic liberties taken by these two writers produced two books of fantasy. Other writers who reacted to this fiction swung to the other end of the spectrum and wrote damning indictments against Wyatt Earp. Tefertiller gives us the facts and leaves it to the reader to parse Wyatt Earp, the man.

I have visited many a Sonoran Desert site with Mr. Tefertiller—places where events in the Earp saga took place. There we have engaged in conversations and batted around ideas. I judge him to be a most reliable and dedicated researcher/writer.

By now, readers can get a sense of where my recommendations are going with all of this. Life in the West was hard, and alcohol and drugs were turned to (often) to help reduce the pain, discomfort, and loneliness of living in the western United States. Whiskey tended to be of poor quality, drugs were not known to be addictive, and a lot of the stereotypical old west behavior stemmed from the use of liquor and drugs – often to the detriment of the users…and innocent bystanders.