““There was a run-down old tollbridge station in the Shoestring Valley of Southern Oregon where Uncle Preston Shiveley had lived for fifty years, outlasting a wife, two sons, several plagues of grasshoppers, wheat-rust and caterpillars, and a couple or three invasions of land-hunting settlers and real-estate speculators, and everybody else except the scattering of old pioneers who cockleburred themselves onto the country the same time he did.”
The setting is the early 1900s of Oregon. The plot concerns itself with a young man named Clay Calvert, who gets himself involved with springing Uncle Preston’s no-good son Wade from jail. Afraid to be caught for this transgression, Clay takes off with an Indian boy for a bit, until he meets a horse trader and his beautiful daughter, Luce. Winning Luce is no simple thing, and in the course of this relationship’s development the reader learns about cattle and horses, shipping on the Columbia River, harvesting wheat, horse racing, whore houses, and pioneer justice. The tone is breezy, and the descriptions of the land often beautiful. The only sour note for me was the consistently derogatory language the author uses to describe the Native Americans. It certainly wouldn’t be acceptable if it were written today.”
sthurner wrote this review Tuesday, April 28 2009.
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