Westerns

I might have said this before, but if I haven’t, my favorite writer is Louis L’Amour.

Somewhere around my freshman year of high school I started reading his books. Maybe even a year earlier. Our school library stocked most of his books and the ones they didn’t, I bought. At the time I think he’d already written well over 100 books and I read them all. Multiple times. In fact, I could read one in less than a day, mostly during free time in my classes. Lecture and doing the schoolwork didn’t take up all the time, so I had plenty of opportunities to read.

Why is Louis L’Amour my favorite? I’ve seen enough ‘best writer’ lists to know he’s not usually included. No, my love for him as an author is because he tells a darn good story. His images are vivid, the people talk like real people, and the stories are heavy on human struggles - greed, jealousy, anger, love, etc. They’re not complex stories, and they don’t have to be. They’re stories you can imagine someone telling around a campfire; okay, maybe a little long for that setting, but you get my point.

During my school days, Mr. L’Amour was still alive and churning out new books, including some longer hardcovers, which he hadn’t done in the previous decades. I bought each new one as it came out. Many of the novels took place in the desert Southwest where I grew up, and those that didn’t were stories of exotic lands I thought I’d never see, like Florida or Massachusetts.

Why do I bring this up? Because The Wife is reading through the Sackett series for the first time and with each one she picks up I find myself remembering the characters and story. After all, I did read them more than once. She’s reading them in supposedly chronological order, although there are a few anomalies here and there, which I’d expect since he wrote the stories over several decades. Regardless, they provided me with a lot of reading enjoyment and memories of great stories that have lasted a lifetime. Thank you, Mr. L’Amour.