Our compañero Lane Batot filled a significant hole in the Frontier Partisans library. The Pony Express arrived last week with his gift of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ two Apache novels (plus a bonus book on lions in Africa). They will be my nightstand reads in the coming weeks. So THOSE Apaches are here. We’ll have to wait till May 27 for Black … [Read more...] about Where Are The Apaches?

I’ve probably given Tecumseh short-shrift here at Frontier Partisans. He is widely regarded as the most talented leader of the indigenous resistance to American power and the pan-Indian movement he sought to create in the early years of the 19th Century was the last best chance to establish a genuine (non-reservation) native sovereignty in the … [Read more...] about There’s A Panther In The Sky

Haggard stands at the fountainhead and nexus of what I call “exotic adventure fiction.” Such fiction moves beyond the sort of stories told up until that time —adventures of pirates, cowboys, swashbucklers, explorers and whatnot —  and adds something extra, something over the top, something truly exotic. One strand leads to tales of Indiana Jones, … [Read more...] about Burnham & Haggard On The Imperial Frontier

I stumbled over it in the Glendale Public Library back in 1987. You know there’s no way I’m going to pass by a book titled Yellowstone Kelly: Gentleman & Scout. I sat down on the floor in the aisle, cracked it open and started laughing my ass off. Peter Bowen’s first book was an irreverent romp through High Plains Hi-jinx that hit on all the … [Read more...] about The Passing Of A Yarn-Spinner

Daniel Boone may have said that all a man needs to be happy in life is a good gun, a good horse and a good wife — but he damn sure packed a well-thumbed copy of Gulliver’s Travels in his possibles. Books are as important as powder and lead, as necessary as a sharp knife a good ax and a good pair of boots; for some of us as vital as food and … [Read more...] about To Arms! To Arms! Save Your Indie Bookstore!

Deuce Richardson has long held aloft the torch in honor of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Lane Batot will extoll the joys of the Tarzan novels at the drop of a hat — and he’ll drop the hat himself. This is as it should be, for ERB was a genuine Frontier Partisans literary giant — one that I have somehow never fully connected with. That needs to be … [Read more...] about Apaches And Martians — A Frontier Partisans Tribute To Edgar Rice Burroughs

It don’t take no virus to make me want to hole up with this book. Taylor Brown is a badass. He’s as good as they come. I devoured his River of Kings in great bloody chunks, and I know damn well I’ll do the same with his new one. Pride of Eden drops on March 17. Retired racehorse jockey and Vietnam veteran Anse Caulfield rescues exotic big cats, … [Read more...] about Quarantine Me

South Africa is haunted by ghosts: Ghosts of the million who died during the mfecane (The Crushing) when the rise of the Zulu Empire touched off a shockwave of indigenous warfare and migration from 1815 to 1840; ghosts of massacred Trekboers; ghosts of women and children who wasted away in British concentration camps during the Anglo Boer War of … [Read more...] about The Weird Of Deadly Hollow

I recently introduced my friend Leith Easterling to the AMC series Turn: Washington’s Spies, which is streaming on Netflix. If you can get past the liberties (sorry) taken with some of the historical figures — Captain John Simcoe and Robert Rogers especially — it’s an entertaining drama depicting the activities of the Culper Ring in New York during … [Read more...] about Jack Absolute — Frontier Partisan