Thu 28 Mar 2024
Weird Western Stories I’m Reading: JANE LINDSKOLD “The Drifter.”
Posted by Steve under Science Fiction & Fantasy , Stories I'm Reading , Western Fiction[3] Comments
JANE LINDSKOLD “The Drifter.” First appeared in A Girl’s Guide to Guns and Monsters, edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Kerrie Hughes (Daw, paperback original, 2010). Collected in Curiosities (CreateSoace, trade paperback, 2015).
To begin with, here’s the first paragraph:
Jane Lindskold is an author known for her stories of mythological fantasy – werewolves, shape-shifters, satyrs, merfolk, and unicorns, according to her Wikipedia page – but she wisely holds off on telling the reader was exactly the “trouble” is that she is on the trail of, but you can take it from me that that Wikipedia description is right on the mark.
I will tell you this. Prudence Bledsoe is the kind of woman that when she rides into town, people notice. Not many women ride into town, you see, a drifter, you might say, on horseback, not one of the usual arrivals on the train or by stagecoach. That first sentence also lets us know that she is a woman on a mission, and I think the townsfolk know that, too.
Jane Lindskold is a very good writer. Besides setting up the story as she does in the very first sentence, she also conveys the dustiness and the on-the-edge of nowhere feeling of the town and the townspeople. Cattle and sheep have been gruesomely killed, she learns, and young children have gone missing. And at length, Prudence Bledsoe’s own personal secret is revealed.
This is not a classic unforgettable story, but any means, but it’s an effective one, and it’s a fine choice for the leading one in a collection entitled A Girl’s Guide to Guns and Monsters.
March 29th, 2024 at 5:17 am
Steve, that was a catchy review of a story I’d like to catch someday. the “Weird Western” niche seems to be growing into a genre lately.
(*WARNING! a bit of self-promotion follows as I make my point.)
I didn’t even know there was a label for it till I got an idea about adolescent angst and used the metaphor of a cowboy in his teens who makes a deal with the devil and has to live through the consequences. When I submitted THE DEVIL & STREAK WILSON to a Publisher, the response was “I like it but I need a series.”
I’m working on the third book now, and along the way I found out how densely the fictional West was populated by ghosts, ghoulies, and gunfighters who went bump in the night. I wouldn’t say the field was crowded -yet- but densely populated to be sure.
March 29th, 2024 at 11:07 am
For those reading this who may have missed it, here’s a link to my review of THE DEVIL & STREAK WILSON:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=68326
I don’t read a lot of weird fiction, and not at all if it’s of the gruesome gross-out variety, but if it’s intelligent and nuanced, then yes, I can find time in my reading day for it. Western fiction and weird fiction may seem like a even weirder mashup, but once you think about it, then, yes, why not.
March 30th, 2024 at 12:59 am
There has always been a touch of weird Western fiction. Max Brand wrote a story called “Werewolf” with an actual werewolf and there is more than a touch of the Gothic about Clark’s TRACK OF THE CAT.
Eastwood slipped into films like HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and PALE RIDER, and I recall many years ago Harlan Ellison penned an episode of CIMARRON STRIP where Jack the Ripper showed up.
The weird as always tickled around the edges, but not it seems to be mainstreaming in the genre which here and from what Dan and Steve say seems to be a good thing.