There are few things I love more than imagining a landscape back to a historical event. Some places are better for that than others. Spent Saturday’s breakfast with a fine video exploring Comancheria. I found this strangely stirring…
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Got to wondering what the author of the estimable enviro-thriller Bearskin is up to. It’ll be a while yet, but he’s got a follow-up coming.
Siblings Bowman and Summer were raised by their father and two uncles on a remote Colorado ranch. They react differently to his radical teachings and the confusions of adolescence. As young adults, they become estranged but are brought back together in their thirties by the prospect of an illegal and potentially dangerous inheritance from their grandfather. They must ultimately reconcile with each other and their past in order to defeat ruthless criminal forces trying to extort the inheritance.
Set in the rugged American West and populated by drug cartels, shadowy domestic terrorists, and nefarious business interests, Panther Gap shows James McLaughlin’s talents on full display: gorgeous environmental writing, a white-knuckle thriller plot, and characters dealing with legacy, identity, and their own place in the world.
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Literary influences are powerful. I’m pretty sure that daughter Ceili and her new husband Jarod chose to honeymoon in Wyoming because of C.J. Box. It was a good choice, if the pictures they’ve shared are any indication. Mountain Man country. I’ll see if she’s willing to let me post some when they return…
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I’ve developed a bit of an obsession lately with a couple of frontier symphonies….
John Bullard says
Saw the “Empire of the Summer Moon” vid on my recommended list on Youtube last week and watched it. I thought it was fantastic and it has given me some more places to travel to when/if gas prices get affordable. Highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
I also recommend this Youtube site for tales on Frontier culture clashes from American and Texas history: “Unworthy History”
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmCdvdsjVFCHicCOVEdwpcg/videos
JimC says
Yeah, my immediate desire was to get in the truck and GO.
David Wrolson says
In 2012, we did a family trip to Texas and made the Palo Duro Canyon part of the trip.
We attended a outdoor historical pageant there (Canyon, TX, I think) and me and the kids climbed from the bottom of the canyon to as high as we could go on one of the waterways or whatever it was.
Joe says
Palo Duro park is absolutely breathtaking. I visited with the family as a child, but I wasn’t as appreciative of its inspiring vistas and historic links to the Comanche and the Southern Plains Tribes, and the Red River War as I am today. Would highly recommend to any author, artist, or layman looking for a landscape that truly does appear to be straight out of a Western painting.