This has been sitting on my bookshelf for years and I didn't realize it was a collection of short stories, nor did I realize they were linked and leading up to Montana 1948. I have read two of the seven stories so far. The first entitled "Julian Hayden" tells the story of a very young man who pulls up stakes and moves with his mother to Montana because land is cheap and he is not thriving in Iowa. He leaves his sister behind because he doesn't feel she is up to frontier life. He makes arrangements with a minister that his sister will tutor his daughters but will not do any manual labor. Guess what? The ending is surprising and somewhat violent. The second story, "Enid Garling" tells the story of Julian's marriage.
I like Watson's writing so much. He is direct and seldom uses an unnecessary word. I don 't know why I am so drawn to stories set in the West but I am. Perhaps this is the style of writing I read most as a kid.
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Not home to check, but I'm pretty sure I read this one, along with MONTANA 1948.
Not much reading time on this trip. I'm reading Hugh Howey's MACHINE LEARNING, which is not likely to make you feel better about the world we're living in. I found his anti- AI/machines take over story "Executable" to be pretty depressing, and possibly prescient in TERMINATOR way.
I read a lot of Westerns when I was a kid. And, now, I read about one Western a month. Jeff Meyerson is right be concerned about Artificial Intelligence. It could go to the TERMINATOR option, or it could make our lives a lot better. We'll see which way it goes...
I really should read this one, Patti. I did enjoy Montana 1948 a lot, and I like Watson's writing style.
He's a favorite of mine.
I came to like westerns later in life.
I have a copy of MONTANA 1948 after I read about several of Larry Watson's books here. Now I will look a copy of JUSTICE.
And, of course, it isn't AI per se, but the people (often not good people) who are designing and implementing it. Certainly Google's AI which they are now consistently foisting on us (but which can be ignored...for now) is annoying as All Get Out.
The Anon AI grouser above is me. (Using Alice's computer at the moment.) I've read westerns all my literate life, just never as assiduously as horror and other fantastic fiction, or crime fiction, but westerns/other historical fiction have been a component much as has contemporary mimetic, from childhood onward. My favorite novel as an early adolescentt kid was a contemporary western, and Newbery runner-up, THE LONER by Ester Wier (the book it lost to, IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT, was essentially a very similar story set in an urban environment, and by me almost as good).
Another early favorite, if a bit of an Eastern, was Conrad Richter's THE LIGHT IN THE FOREST. (Also a frontier story, set earlier. And, as an Alaska-born, I couldn't resist the Very downbeat and essentially contemporary JULIE OF THE WOLVES, by Jean Craighead George.)
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