Long Ride Home
by Louis L'Amour
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RIDE ALONG INTO DANGERTraveling under an alias, the last thing gunman Clip Haynes wanted was attention. But Basin City needed a town-taming marshal, and a cold-blooded murderer was hiding behind Haynes’s real name. Now Haynes was coming out of hiding to protect his honor, save a town, and catch a killer—even if it cost him his life.
Lou Morgan was as tough as they came. But it wasn’t just the money or the challenge that motivated him to take on a suicide job involving a buried show more Spanish treasure and two greedy killers. It was love for a beautiful señorita who had left him for dead years ago.
It’s not easy being the new schoolma’am in town . . . especially when you’re a man. But Van Brady isn’t quite the tenderfoot he seems, and before he’s through he’ll teach a few hard cases a lesson they’ll never forget.
From the rough-and-tumble streets of San Francisco to the dry desert plains of Texas, from a roughshod gambler willing to wager his own life on a single bet to a killer with a heart, here are stirring tales of the Old West as only Louis L’Amour can write them, tales of men and women risking their lives, fighting their wars, and standing tall on the American frontier.
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Eight shorter length stories, all entertaining. These kind of remind me of the type of stories that were staples of TV westerns. This is not high-brow literary stuff. It is entertainment. L'Amour, as I have noted before, seems to always have the good guy survive a gunfight that stretches belief and he also loves giving a blow by blow step by step accounting of a fistfight. I'm sure this appealed to his core readership many decades ago but are the least interesting parts of the story to me. I find these short stories more entertaining than the novels.
This a collection of eight of L'Amour's short stories all of which are set in the west. Most include fist fights vividly described by L'Amour who in most instances has the winner using his knowledge of boxing to beat a bigger man. Many of the stories use the plot device of a wealthy powerful man who treats all around him badly being defeated by someone younger, smarter and more honest.
The bonus in this volume is the addition in the back of an excerpt from Louis' autobiography, The Education of a Wondering Man. The excerpt from his book is one that I have never been able to forget. It is his description of taking on a job of working a gold mine near Death Valley for five days. When the owner didn't return after five days, Louis had to show more walk out through the desert carrying water in a tin can when he could find it. An amazing feat. show less
The bonus in this volume is the addition in the back of an excerpt from Louis' autobiography, The Education of a Wondering Man. The excerpt from his book is one that I have never been able to forget. It is his description of taking on a job of working a gold mine near Death Valley for five days. When the owner didn't return after five days, Louis had to show more walk out through the desert carrying water in a tin can when he could find it. An amazing feat. show less
A pleasant collection of short stories, some humorous, some more serious. There is a Cactus Kid story concerning a "friendly" poker game and some denizens of the Barbary Coast that makes me laugh.
This book consists of a good group of short stories, written by the master of the Western genre, Louis L'Amour. Recommended, and worthy of a re-read.
Boy, does he know how to start a story. And, since this is a collection of stories he has many a chance to give us an adequate overview of his styles.
As I have said before, I tend to like L'Amour's short stories better than his novels.
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Born in Jamestown, North Dakota on March 22, 1908, Louis L'Amour's adventurous life could have been the subject of one of his novels. Striking out on his own in 1923, at age 15, L'Amour began a peripatetic existence, taking whatever jobs were available, from skinning dead cattle to being a sailor. L'Amour knew early in life that he wanted to be a show more writer, and the experiences of those years serve as background for some of his later fiction. During the 1930s he published short stories and poetry; his career was interrupted by army service in World War II. After the war, L'Amour began writing for western pulp magazines and wrote several books in the Hopalong Cassidy series using the pseudonym Tex Burns. His first novel, Westward the Tide (1950), serves as an example of L'Amour's frontier fiction, for it is an action-packed adventure story containing the themes and motifs that he uses throughout his career. His fascination with history and his belief in the inevitability of manifest destiny are clear. Also present and typical of L'Amour's work are the strong, capable, beautiful heroine who is immediately attracted to the equally capable hero; a clear moral split between good and evil; reflections on the Native Americans, whose land and ways of life are being disrupted; and a happy ending. Although his work is somewhat less violent than that of other western writers, L'Amour's novels all contain their fair share of action, usually in the form of gunfights or fistfights. L'Amour's major contribution to the western genre is his attempt to create, in 40 or more books, the stories of three families whose histories intertwine as the generations advance across the American frontier. The novels of the Irish Chantry, English Sackett, and French Talon families are L'Amour's most ambitious project, and sadly were left unfinished at his death. Although L'Amour did not complete all of the novels, enough of the series exists to demonstrate his vision. L'Amour's strongest attribute is his ability to tell a compelling story; readers do not mind if the story is similar to one they have read before, for in the telling, L'Amour adds enough small twists of plot and detail to make it worth the reader's while. L'Amour fans also enjoy the bits of information he includes about everything from wilderness survival skills to finding the right person to marry. These lessons give readers the sense that they are getting their money's worth, that there is more to a L'Amour novel than sheer escapism. With over 200 million copies of his books in print worldwide, L'Amour must be counted as one of the most influential writers of westerns in this century. He died from lung cancer on June 10, 1988. (Bowker Author Biography) Louis L'Amour, truly America's favorite storyteller, was the first fiction writer ever to receive the Congressional Gold Medal from the United States Congress in honor of his life's work, & was also awarded the Medal of Freedom. There are over 260 million copies of his books in print worldwide. (Publisher Provided) show less
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Long Ride Home
- Original title
- Long Ride Home
- Original publication date
- 1989
- People/Characters
- Cactus Kid; One-Ear Tim; Harper; Jim Wise; Starrett; Tensleep Mooney (show all 7); Kim Sartain
- Important places
- Barbary Coast, San Francisco, California, USA; Knight's Landing
- First words
- Four people, two women and two men, boarded the San Francisco boat in company with the Cactus Kid.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"A long ride," Tensleep Mooney agreed, "an' I'll be glad to get home."
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Statistics
- Members
- 560
- Popularity
- 52,503
- Reviews
- 11
- Rating
- (3.59)
- Languages
- Catalan, English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 11
- ASINs
- 5
