The Strong Shall Live

B

It has been quite a long time since I read a western so I thought I would give this collection of short stories a go. I got lucky, although L'Amour is of course a good writer. These are stories primarily about courage, about men tested in tough times on the frontier. I can't imagine western fans disliking these. They were easy to read and I enjoyed them. Some of these stories were excellent. The final story in this collection, "Bluff Creek Station", was especially moving. This 1980 collection does not indicate the origin of the stories, although with some searching I was able to track information down. "Bluff Creek Station" was published first in an earlier form as "The Blood of Ryan" in the magazine Thrilling Western, May 1951. It show more reads like a true story and I wonder if it is. Similarly some of the other stories appeared in Western magazines in the 50's. This collection really reminded me to include some L'Amour in my reading from time to time. Recommended if you like the genre - I don't know how this compares to the typical westerns however. 3 1/2 - 4 stars show less

I'm not usually a fan of short stories but this has to be one of my favorite set of stories I have read. Mr. L'Amour managed to make me become emotional attached to these characters which I rarely find in short stories.

This is a short collection of stories by L'Amour. Some of them are quite good, some feel like fragments of longer works, and some are pretty rough (I thought the last 2 stories were especially rough and needed editing). There are several non-White characters in these stories, including one hero, a Hispanic landowner dealing with a bunch of racist neighbors during a drought brought on by overgrazing. The collection is pretty diverse, and a fast read.

This book is an above average collection of Louis L'Amour's short stories, each one an example of the will to survive against the odds. In one tale, an actor faces certain death in order to protect innocents, while in another story Jim Bostwick realizes that he can't possibly survive an encounter with a gunfighter, an encounter he can't find a way to avoid. Each story has a different scenario, without predictable results or typical characters.

This collection contains ten stories of people facing danger and death, with courage and determination, without backing down. I liked each and every one of these narratives.

This was a good collection of stories. This was one of my dad's favorite books (and we laid a copy of it to rest with him), and I wanted to make sure I had read it. Louis L'amour writes a good story, and this collection is evidence of that.

They came west to stay, risking their blood to dig the gold, ride the range, conquer the greedy, and carve out a legacy of freedom. Men honed by desert fires and edged by combat with fist and gun. Women tested to the limit of endurance by an unrelenting land. Now, in a long-awaited collection of his stories, Louis L'Amour tells of the real heroes of the frontier, the survivors for whom hanging tough was as natural as drawing breath.