Little Annie Oakley and Other Rugged People

Stewart Holbrook wrote for The Oregonian newspaper in the decades bracketing WWII, and had a pretty good side hustle going with magazine articles and books, mostly centering on the Pacific Northwest.

Little Annie Oakley and Other Rugged People is a collection of 28 of articles published in the 1940s and deals, as the title suggests, with various oddball characters ranging from the famous to the obscure. Oakley is only one of the better-known subjects, and she fares better in her brief biography than a couple of other Western noteworthies, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill being prime examples of the myth being deconstructed with humor and insight.

But where Holbrook really shines is in his re-creation of the heyday of the logging industry show more in the Pacific Northwest, much of it observed firsthand as he worked the camps as a young man. Here are vividly-drawn whistle punks, bull cooks, Wobblies, and hard-working, hard-playing, hard-drinking loggers, along with stories of the towns and communities that grew up to serve them.

Many of Holbrook’s books are still available with just a little digging, and the payoff is well worth the effort. show less