Horace McCoy by Mark Royden Winchell, and Will Henry/Clay Fisher by Robert L. Gale, and Jessamyn West by Ann Dahlstrom Farmer, and The New Wild West: The Urban Mysteries of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler by Paul Skenazy, and Mabel Dodge Luhan by Jane Nelson (review)

176 Western American Literature tographer can make his contribution to regional history. Kim Ode deals with the newspaper as both artifact and curator of culture, and Geoffrey R. Hunt describes how local organizations can help in maintaining the historical tradi­ tion. John Milton ends the book by assessing the condition of scholarship deal­ ing with South Dakota literature. As one who lived most of his first thirty years within whistling distance of the Big Sioux, I find these writers both stimulating and accurate in their assessment of the culture of the Scandinavians, Dutch, and Germans who wrested an empire from the stubborn prairie. Like RSlvaag, Manfred, Herbert Krause, and Laura Ingalls Wilder (the best-known fiction-writers from the region), the essayists of Siouxland Heritage remind us, forcefully and grace­ fully, that we cannot understand our present and our future without first knowing our past. ROBERT C. STEENSMA University of Utah Horace .McCoy. By Mark Royden Winchell. (Boise: Western Writers Series No. 51, 1982. 50 pages, $2.00.) Will Henry/Clay Fisher. By Robert L. Gale. (Boise: Western Writers Series No. 52, 1982. 54 pages, $2.00.) Jessamyn West. By Ann Dahlstrom Farmer. (Boise: Western Writers Series No. 53, 1982. 51 pages, $2.00.) The New Wild West: The Urban Mysteries of Dashiell Hammett and Ray­ mond Chandler. By Paul Skenazy. (Boise: Western Writers Series No. 54, 1982. 52 pages, $2.00.) Mabel Dodge Luhan. By Jane Nelson. (Boise: Western Writers Series No. 55, 1982. 50 pages, $2.00.) During the last eleven years the fifty-page Boise State Western Writers pamphlets have been a continuing source of useful reference information on major and minor western authors. Some of the brief guides deal with first-rank American authors—Wallace Stegner, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, and Robin­ son Jeffers — while others treat less well-known writers. The five pamphlets under review deal with writers belonging in the latter category. Mark Royden Winchell’s Horace McCoy is a serviceable introduction to an author known primarily for his novel, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They. Summarizing McCoy’s early years in Tennessee, Texas, in World War I, and back in Texas, the author then treats McCoy’s first fictional efforts in Black Mask, the premier pulp outlet for detective fiction in the 1920s and 30s. Curiously, Winchell discusses all of McCoy’s later fiction before treating They Reviews 177 Shoot Horses, his first and best novel. After that initial success, McCoy’scareer fell away steadily until it reached its lowest ebb in McCoy’s last novel, Scalpel (1952). In general, this is a competent study of a minor writer. Even more thorough is Robert Gale’s pamphlet on Henry Wilson Allen, who wrote most of his Westerns under the pen names Will Henry and Clay Fisher. Although one may not agree with Gale’s contention that Allen is the “most underrated, persistently overlooked of the major writers of the American West” (p. 5), one must admit that Gale’s extensive commentary on plots, major characters, and Allen’s use of history provides a more than adequate introduction to this writer. Majoring on content and minoring on criticism and evaluation, Gale chooses to give capsule summaries of Allen’smany novels rather than to stress his most important volumes. Still, this is a handy intro­ duction with an extensive bibliography. Less successful is Ann Dahlstrom Farmer’s study of Jessamyn West. Her discussions of this Quaker writer are too discursive and lack sufficient analysis to be completely satisfactory. Had the author chosen to include less plot sum­ mary and more systematic evaluation her pamphlet would be more helpful. One wishes too that the discussions had dealt chronologically with West’s career so as to clarify her development as a writer. On the other hand, Farmer’s extensive use of her correspondence with West adds a dimension missing in earlier commentaries on West. Paul Skenazy’s pamphlet is an unusual item in the Boise State series in that it includes extended commentary on a genre — the hard-boiled detective novel — and deals with two writers — Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler— and includes three or four pages on a third writer, Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald). The author...