Book a Week, July 22

After so much heavy fiction recently, I need a bit of a break, so we're taking a slimmer and I hope easier volume this week, Ernest Haycox's The Adventurers, another volume from my grandfather's library that I haven't read yet. Haycox was a native of Portland, Oregon; he was a prolific writer, managing to write twelve novels and over three hundred short stories. In his day he was very highly regarded; he was, for instance, one of Ernest Hemingway's favorite authors. Except for some early works set in the American Revolution, his works seem to be all Western fiction: cowboys, frontiers, pioneers, and the like. Several of his stories were made into movies; one of his short stories, in fact, was made into a John Wayne movie, Stagecoach. Haycox is usually listed as among the greats of the genre, along with notable names like Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey, so it should at least be enjoyable light reading.