I woke up this morning thinking about old-school historical potboilers. Yeah, I know. But you all know by now that my mind functions this way…
Actually, there’s a straightforward explanation for why I roused from my slumbers with visions of F. van Wyck Mason dancing through my head. I hit the pillow after scrolling through a Kindle series of novels set during the French & Indian War. They look… OK… but nothing that would trip my trigger. Apparently my subconscious mind niggled at this all night, because I woke up thinking about books I read in my teens when vivid historical fiction written mainly for a male audience was still a thing. For some reason, F. van Wyck Mason’s Wild Horizon was at the forefront.
Mason was the scion of an old (17th Century) New England family. He ran off to fight in World War I at the age of 17. He turned to writing pulp stories and then to historical fiction — a lot of it set during the American Revolution. Wild Horizon recounts the settlement of frontier Tennessee, and if I remember it right, it was a damn fine read that featured some frontier figures who are now mostly forgotten, like James Robertson and the long hunter Kaspar Mansker.
I also remember reading his novel about the buccaneer Sir Henry Morgan.
Another World War I veteran whose frontier fiction I read at a young age was Hervey Allen. I think his The Forest and the Fort was a little over my head back then. It was a bestseller in 1943, telling the tale of one Salatheil Albine (that name!), who had been captured and raised by Indians. The novel revolves around the 1763 siege of Fort Pitt during Pontiac’s War. I remember it being slow and confusing, but I was just a kid. I oughta track down a copy and take another crack at it.
Pondering over all this at breakfast, I remembered a novel that I picked up off a paperback spinner in a variety shop in Wrightwood, California, where my folks had a cabin. It was titled The Mohawk Ladder, which was entirely irresistible to me. I remember being initially confused that it wasn’t actually a frontier story — it was set during Queen Anne’s War in Europe in the early 18th Century, featuring American colonial frontiersmen with experience with the Iroquois, fighting under the Duke of Marlborough. I don’t remember much about the plot, but I remember that I absolutely loved it. I wonder if it would hold up today?
Turns out that this was the first novel (1951) of the astonishingly prolific Noel B. Gerson, who wrote more than 300 books under his own and a variety of pen names. Among the noms de plume was Donald Clayton Porter. Under that name he wrote the White Indian series of novels — which I ran through at a furious pace in my early teens on those weekends in Wrightwood. The opening novel is billed as “The Lusty, Turbulent Saga Of America’s First Frontier.” And so it is.
James Reasoner has a nice summation on his blog here.
It opens in 1685, several generations after the founding of the first English colony in North America. Settlers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony have established an outpost known as Fort Springfield in the valley of the Connecticut River, but they have to worry constantly about Indian attacks, and with good reason. During one such raid by Seneca warriors, a young couple named Jed and Minnie Harper are killed, and their infant son is carried off by the Seneca chief Ghonka, who adopts the boy, names him Renno, and raises him to be a great warrior.
That’s just the beginning of this novel, which follows Renno to manhood. Like Tarzan, he comes to realize that he’s different from those who have raised him. Also like Tarzan, he’s the biggest, fastest, strongest bad-ass in the jungle – I mean forest – and eventually allies himself with the English while still maintaining his ties to the Seneca. He fights on the side of the English during clashes with the French, who are also trying to establish colonies in North America, and starts a long-running feud with a Frenchman who’s so evil he practically twirls his mustache.
There were sexy bits. I remember that. It was a lusty saga, after all…
Lustiness was a big selling point for frontier tales. Many of the writers of historical fiction got their start in the pulps and — praise Crom! — never entirely lost their pulp sensibilities. The cover illustrations targeted their audience with prominent snowy bosoms and lurking savage menace.
I’ve explored Dal Van Every’s frontier histories (recently published in e-book format). Van Every was also a prolific writer of blood-and-thunder frontier fiction — solid history that played as potboilers. Brawling sagas and so forth…
It’s been 40 years since I’ve read any of these books. I’m certain that they are dated in their depictions of Indians and women, but I’m also certain that the quality of the writing is superior to the the current run of e-book historical fiction series. These guys were serious professional craftsmen who wrote well and knew how to tell a ripping yarn. I might just hunt one or two of these down and put ’em on the bedside table to see what they look like through 54-year-old eyes.
Paul McNamee says
These guys were serious professional craftsmen who wrote well and knew how to tell a ripping yarn.
Whenever I consider what the pulp and mass market paperback writers cranked out on a yearly basis (often using pen names,) it blows my mind. And yes, nothing classic. But they knew how to craft a story and deliver it to the target audience.
JimC says
The sheer butt-in-chair work ethic is impressive as hell.
H.P. @ Hillbilly Highways says
This is the sort of thing Robert E. Howard might have gone on to write exceptionally well had he not committed suicide.
JimC says
Yes, excellent point.
Keith West says
I will have to look for some of these at the next Friends of the Library sale.
James Reasoner says
I haven’t read Van Every or Allen, but I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve ever read by Van Wyck Mason and most of Gerson’s novels. I’ve read only the first four White Indian books but that’s one series I wish I’d continued. Gerson wrote the first seven or eight for sure. I don’t recall where other authors took over as Donald Clayton Porter, but a friend of mine wrote the final two or three in the series, which had low print runs and are hard to find these days.
This post has got me in the mood to read some Mason again.
JimC says
Great to hear from you sir! I have a hunch I’ll enjoy rediscovering Mason.
Woelf Dietrich says
I doubt I have read any of these authors but I’ve put them on my must-read list. My ever-growing must-read list.
Reese Crawford says
Not exactly a lusty potboiler, but I just finished Morrell’s Last Reveille and all I can say is wow! The perfect story of a man caught between two cultures, not by geography or race but by time. Wonderful book that will join my top shelf collection.
JimC says
His best, I think.
Breaker Morant says
Adding Last Reveille to the never ending list. Reading the synopsis on Amazon, I was reminded of the real life story of Frederick Russell Burnham, who picked the brain of a crotchety old scout in his youth.
Breaker Morant says
I had a book jump into my hands today when I wandered into the used books section of a semi-local library. i live in a rural area with a widely scattered affiliated library system.
I have come across mention of Frazer’s “The Golden Bough” before, but had no idea what it was. Apparently, it is a 12-volume monstrosity about myths and stuff.
Well, I happened to pick up a 1-volume abridgement and the book happened to open to a page with this paragraph.
>>>”In the religious history of the Aryan race in Europe the worship of trees has played an important part. Nothing could be more natural. For at the dawn of history Europe was covered with immense primaeval forests, in which the scattered clearings must have appeared like islets in an ocean of green….the Hercynian forest stretched eastward from the Rhine at once vast and unknown.”<<<<
Well, I was hooked. While I have no intention of (at this point) of reading the book, I had to own that paragraph and the next few. I count that as a dollar well spent.
Something tells me I might be perusing parts of that book more than I originally thought.
JimC says
I absolutely get that.
John Roberts says
“The Golden Bough” had a vast influence on writers of the first half of the 20th century. Its influence can be found in the work of Robert Graves, Tolkien, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Mary Renault, Henry Treece and many others. The Sacred Oak, The Sacrificial Year-King, mistletoe and numerous other motifs first entered popular literature by way of Fraser. I’ve read the whole thing and used many of these images and themes in my own novel KING OF THE WOOD, and am using it in my current project, an SPQR novel. Fraser is considered dated now but his importance can’t be stressed enough.
JimC says
Aaron says
Don Wright wrote 2 good ones about the frontier and one post civil war in Texas. For pulp I like Casca the Eternal Mercenary. I’ll try a couple of the ones you mentioned.
deuce says
“Mason was the scion of an old (17th Century) New England family. He ran off to fight in World War I at the age of 17. (…)
I also remember reading his novel about the buccaneer Sir Henry Morgan.”
It certainly sounds like ol’ Francis–his birth name–led an interesting life while cranking out the pulpy goodness. I’ve read nothing by him, but I’ve all I’ve heard is good about his novel, THE BARBARIANS.
A historical author that I’ve REALLY gotten into–and I wouldn’t have believed it if someone had predicted it 5yrs ago–is Gardner F. Fox. Best-known for writing DC comics and B-grade S&S, his historicals are the real deal. Very much how I see REH going on to write historicals. Good plotting, well-done violence and Gar could do just the right degree of “lusty”. His pirate historicals, CAPTAIN SEADOG and MADAME BUCCANEER both read like excellent Black Vulmea pastiches. I haven’t read a single historical of his that I haven’t liked–and I loved several of them–and his Western, BLOOD TRAIL, is a quality novel as well. Jim Reasoner agrees with me on that.
THE MOHAWK LADDER sounds quite interesting.
Norman Andrews says
Have any of you folks read ” the First Frontier Series” by Mike Roarke ?, I read them years ago and thought it very good.
Norm.
JimC says
I have not. Looks interesting.
Fred Blosser says
Great recommendations! I’d add Hugh Pendexter’s novels of the French & Indian War (THE RED ROAD, THE BUSH FIGHTERS, etc); a little old-fashioned in style but well-plotted and rich in detail without the details drowning the stories. All were published in Adventure magazine in the 1920s, and THE RED ROAD had a U.S. hardcover edition, copies of which show up from dealers at relatively low prices. Others were hardbacked in the U.K. in the 1930s; harder to find and more expensive, but not impossible to locate. Best French & Indian War novel ever, with apologies to the great James Fenimore Cooper? Kenneth Roberts’ NORTHWEST PASSAGE.
JimC says
Thanks for the recommendations. I am not familiar with Pendexter — a situation that I’ll soon rectify.
.lane batot says
B. A.(Before Amazon), I was extremely limited in what I had available to read, so I got suckered into quite a few of those semi-historical romance types, simply because that was about all I could find ’bout injuns! I also got and read many of the “White Indian” series, and I think the first few are worthwhile, but they got increasingly worse and repetitively formulated as they went on, as well as more and more inaccurate historically. I think the one titled “Cherokee” was my last, as I HAD read quite a bit on the Cherokee, and couldn’t abide the liberties taken with real history. Those books DID make me wish to find and read REAL history, however, which I did, and I consider a positive thing. I have one(buried DEEP somewhere in my stampede of books scattered about) that is an old hardback(1900? Yeah, OLD) about some adventurers during Pontiac’s war, that were rescued by Pontiac himself because, like themselves, Pontiac was secretly a MASON! It was a hoot! One that was marketed as a romance novel(complete with alluring cover) that I hesitated to get, but persevered after seeing the illustrations for it in one of those DAMNED Reader’s Digest “condensed books” series(“DAMNED” because they only made me want to find and read THE WHOLE BOOK–I’ve always considered “condensed”or “abridged” anything to be a form of literary BLASPHEMY! And I WAS always APPALLED at what those blasphemous condensers chose to cut, after getting COMPLETE copies!) and was intrigued, and so found a cheap romance novel copy–that would be the EXCELLENT novel “Ghost Fox”, of course, about the teen-age girl taken captive by the Abenaki during the French-and-Indian war–one of my very favorite of that era, and scrupulously accurate! Luckily, now, thanks to Amazon, you can find cheap copies without the romance cover, if you wish! That’s just it, though–some of those old rags are GREAT reading, and send you off on your own quests for historical truth!