Western Annotation: Dreams to Dust: A Tale of the Oklahoma Land Rush

Author: Sheldon Russell

Published:2006

296 pages

Setting: Oklahoma Territory. 1889

The future is up for grabs when the Oklahoma territory is opened up for settlement in April 1889. Creed McReynolds, a half-breed Kiowa, returns from the east where he went to law school, to become a lumber baron in the building boom following the settlement of Guthrie Station, first capitol city of Oklahoma. The lives of others intertwine and collide with Creed's on the dusty plains: businessmen, con-men, freedmen, and orphans, all trying to make a new life in a new land that is sometimes harsh and unforgiving, but always bursting with opportunity.

Elements of Westerns:

Strong sense of place: The story is very descriptive of what it feels like to live on the southern plains. The reader feels present in the hot, humid, wind-swept landscape with its odd combination of being barren and unforgiving, yet teeming with life, albeit life you may not want to meet.

Violent: There is a bit of violence in the telling of events in the story. Characters often instigate and are the victims of lawlessness in a newly settled territory where the law is sometimes a little behind but gets its justice in the end.

 

Lone Hero: The lone hero in this tale is Deputy Buck Reed, a freedman who uses a bit of ingenuity to tame the lawlessness of the Territory, and overcome prejudice of those he seeks to help and those he brings to justice ("I ain't never seed a colored deputy before"). He always gets his man, in the end.

Read-Alikes

The mercy seat by Rilla Askew

No man's land by William W. Johnstone

The lawman by Lyle Brandt

Personal Critique

I was surprised that I really enjoyed this book! The pacing was slower than I expected, but not enough to make me bored. The western-ness of it was not like traditional Westerns, which have no appeal to me at all. This book is a good example of the new type of Western that crosses over with Historical Fiction. It was definitely a Western, but the place and time were explicitly part of the story, and there was accurate depiction of historic details and events even though the characters are fictional. Sheldon Russell also has a mystery series that I want to try as well, but I am not against reading another one of his westerns.

Prompt: Ebooks and Audiobooks

I have only recently (in the past year) begun using ebooks and audiobooks, so my experience is limited. I started listening to audiobooks in my car as an attempt to get more reading done. However, the audiobook is best suited to a different kind of mind, one that is not always thinking very deeply on several topics at once. I will listen well at first, then get distracted by what is going on inside my head (usually prompted by what I just heard) then "wake up" sometime later, wondering where the character with the Scottish accent came from, and what is going on. So I am going to try to stick with books in the car that I have already read so that I know what is going on when this happens to me. At least it's a nice change from radio and my limited music collection.

My husband, on the other hand, is much more of an auditory person than I am. He drives a lot for his job, so it is a challenge for me to keep him in audiobooks. The only complaint I've had so far is if the book is too short. One of my patrons is a local truck driver, and he stocks up on everything from popular bestsellers to YA dystopia. I think he's even tried a vampire fantasy or two. Other patrons have occasionally mentioned that the reader can make or break an audiobook, but mostly our audiobook patrons seem to just want something to listen to while they perform mundane tasks. Length and genre seem to play a bigger role than audio appeal, but then I've never taken any type of survey of them, just what information I've collected from random observation.

Ebooks, for me, do not have the same appeal as an actual book, be it hardback or paperback, but then the old-timers probably said the same thing when the codex started replacing the scroll. I'm sure there are multiple factors that affect others' enjoyment and preference for or against ebooks that have not entered my realm of thinking yet. Personally, I like holding a real book in my hands. I like the pages, the book jackets, the sound of pages turning, and the ability to easily turn back and forth to reread certain parts, check facts and plot, and easily find my place again. All of these factors are in the background and do not interfere with my enjoyment of a story. At first, I did not enjoy the experience of reading an ebook. I was not able to get lost in the story because I was too conscious of the unfamiliarity of the format. Now, the format doesn't bother me as much. What I don't like is the procedures you have to go through if you want to see how far you've come, and especially if you want to go back and re-read a previous area, then find your place again. As far as patrons go we hardly ever see one who is an ebook reader. People with questions about their readers usually get referred to the reference desk, and patrons who check out print books who are ebook readers as well never say anything about needing help finding ebooks, so I have no experience with helping patrons with this type of need yet. I wonder if the appeal of ebooks for some is the same as using the self check-out instead of coming to the circ desk: you don't have to talk to anyone to get what you need.

Book Club Report

          I attended the February meeting of the monthly book club that meets every first Monday at my library. It consists of mostly women and a couple of men, in their 60-70s. This club meets at our library, usually in the meeting room but on this day in the magazine area (which has comfortable seating) because they were doing taxes in the meeting room. Refreshments were served. This month there were five women and one man attending. I was the only new person. A sixth lady came when there were only 15 minutes to go. She thought it started at 12:00 not 11:00 and she was 15 minutes early!

          The book for this month was Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James. Although I had read this book and I am a HUGE Jane Austen fan I took a back seat approach, choosing to mostly observe.  Everyone knew I was a circ clerk in library school and attending as an observer. I only spoke once or twice, to help clarify some characters and their relationships when the members were wondering who the characters were and couldn't remember who was whose sister or wife. One lady did most of the talking, but there were 4 others who also talked  about equally. One lady never said anything until the end, but she listened carefully throughout. It was a very civilized meeting. There were differing opinions sometimes but everyone listened respectfully to each other and disagreed politely. Cheryl, one of our assistant librarians, is the moderator. Cheryl did an awesome job as moderator, especially considering she had never read Pride and Prejudice and Jane Austen isn't really her thing. She did watch the movie (the one with Keira Knightly) and had trouble even getting through that. She did a great job, participating in the discussion some but letting others talk first.

          The questions were edited from LitLovers online book club website. Everyone had a copy of the discussion questions. Most of them had jotted down their observations and opinions while reading the book. Some of the questions assumed a knowledge of Pride and Prejudice. A few people had read that novel, but for most it had been quite a while. One lady (not the over-talky one) seemed to have particular insight into both Death Comes to Pemberley and Jane Austen's works in general, not just Pride and Prejudice. The discussion took the form of going down the list of questions (14 in all) and covering each one until it had been exhausted. A few questions were skipped because the discussion had pretty much covered them in previous questions. Some of the questions got so in-depth that Cheryl had to move things along and remind others of the time. The questions seemed to be equally divided among questions pertaining to the mystery at hand, and questions pertaining to the characters and how they were like the original characters from Pride and Prejudice. My favorite questions involved the Wickhams.

Question: Why is Lydia Wickham never questioned about what happened in the carriage between her husband and Captain Denny?

Consensus: Because she is a dingbat.

Question: What do you think the future holds for Wickham and Lydia?

This one had more varying opinions. Several of the members seemed to think that Wickham would make a huge success of life in America, that it was just his class assignment holding him back in England. They saw him being a successful horse-breeder in the South, and that Lydia would fit in wonderfully as a dingy Southern-belle.The insightful lady had opinions more along the lines of Cheryl and me ( we didn't share these with the group):

Cheryl: Once a player, always a player.

Me: He's gonna get shot by someone's husband.

          I really enjoyed the book club's discussion. This club reads a variety of fiction. Recently they have discussed The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion and Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. I would love to attend regularly if I could!

Special Topic Synopsis: The Development of the Mystery Genre

For my special topic paper I chose to explore the development of crime fiction, for two reasons:
1. It is my very favorite genre ever.
2. I am also taking History of Libraries this semester, so history is sort of on my brain.

          People have been interested in crime and the fate of criminals for millenia. But it was with the advent of the detective in the 1800s that focus in novels that were about crime began to switch from the viewpoint and fate of the criminal to the person who solved the crimes and caught the criminal. Edgar Allan Poe wrote what is considered the first mystery story in 1841, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", and Wilkie Collins followed with the first mystery novel, The Moonstone, in 1868. The most famous detective of all time, Sherlock Holmes, was introduced in 1887 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in A Study in Scarlet.
          The Golden Age of crime fiction was considered to be the 1920s and 1930s. There were four authors considered to be the "Queen" of the Golden Age: Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers, and Margery Allingham. These ladies wrote elegant and "cozy" books featuring one central detective, a few repeat characters, settings in the British countryside, London, or exotic locales, and poison or small daggers of exquisite design as the murder weapon. There was little or no gore, and the mystery was considered a "locked room" puzzle, meaning it was seemingly impossible to commit and/or solve. Many authors of the times went out of print immediately after publication, but the Publishing Division of The British Library has recently begun reissuing many novels and stories from the time period from their archives. (Yippee!! Thank you British Library!)
          Another subgenre of Mystery fiction which originated at about the same time as the Golden Age is the hard-boiled detective novel. Set between two world wars amid severe economic hardship, this type of story featured cynical detectives hardened by much exposure to violence, a gritty tone, and a pervading aura of hopelessness and meaninglessness. Authors such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Eric Stanley Gardner wrote some of the most important books of this type and created such iconic literary and film characters as Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe and Nick and Nora Charles.
          Today, there is a vast number of possibilities in the Mystery genre. They can be most simply grouped into "professional detective" and "amateur detective". Hard-boiled professional detective series include authors like:
          Harlan Coben- Mickey Bolitar series
          Sue Grafton- Kinsey Milhone series
          Michael Connelly - Harry Bosch series

For a less violent approach there are:
          Colin Dexter - Inspector Morse series
          M.C Beaton - Hamish MacBeth series

On the amateur detective side the suggestions could be nearly endless:
          Donna Andrews- Meg Langlow series
          Veronica Heley- Ellie Quick series
          Lilian Jackson Braun- The Cat Who series
          Charles Finch- Charles Lenox series
          Rhys Bowen- Royal Spyness series
          Alan Bradley- Flavia de Luce series
Mystery is thought to be the most popular genre, especially with librarians. Good thing there are so many titles to explore! My personal reading list will take me til I'm approximately 273 to get through!