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78 Western American Literature Much of the novel is autobiographical. As a boy, London disliked his experiences on a farm. But in his late twenties, he grew tired of Oakland, bought land in the Sonoma Valley, and soon thereafter moved to what eventually became his well-known Beauty Ranch. In the final years of his life, London followed the pattern he lays out here for his characters Billy and Saxon: he became a scientific farmer. Like participants in the Country Life Movement, London wanted to pre­ serve the vitality and restorative qualities of farm and ranch life through the application of the latest experiments in soil conservation, crop rotation, and scientific breeding. For London — and for Billy and Saxon in Valley of the Moon — retreating to the land was not enough; man-land relation­ ships must be made fruitful through wise’and scientific planning. Beauty was not entirely successful, but London’s goal to avoid the nostalgia of the back-to-the-land movement carried him beyond this sentimental trend of his times. Unfortunately, London was unsuccessful in translating his ideas and experiences into first-rate fiction. His novel suffers from a wandering plot, too many unnecessary details and episodes, and the excessive emotionalism of the characters. These problems are apparent in several of London’s longer novels and may have resulted from his 1000-words-a-day routine and his unwillingness to revise his fiction. Too much can be made of these weaknesses of structure and characterization, however, without recognizing the novel as a document of its times. The book is a revealing indicator of some aspects of London’s milieu and primarily for this reason is a work worthy of continued attention. But the present edition, with its two-volume format and excessive price, will discourage purchasers and probably not promote the fresh readings that Valley of the Moon deserves. RICHARD W. ETULAIN, Idaho State University The Long Trail: How Cowboys & Longhorns Opened the West. By Gardner Soule. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1976. 341 pages, $10.95.) Gardner Soule’s The Long Trail, a book in the American Trails Series edited by A. B. Guthrie, Jr., is a work of great but unfulfilled promise. The blurb on the dust jacket calls the book “an anecdotal account”; this may well be the book’s greatest fault. The bibliography tells us that Soule’s main source is J. Marvin Hunter’s The Trail Drivers of Texas: the source is worthy, but the product is shoddy. On the surface the organization of The Long Trail seems logical. Soule writes of what happened on the great cattle drives to the northern markets and ranges between 1866 and 1895, year by year, in chronological order. However, within individual chapters the organization is chaotic. Reviews 79 A mass of detail, some relevant and some inconsequential, is presented without discernible purpose. The material is simply not organized. Soule’s style at best could be classed as journalistic, but it is not even good journalism. For instance, on page 26 there are twelve paragraphs. Of the twelve, eight contain only one sentence, with six of those sentences being simple sentences. The other paragraphs, somewhat longer, contain many simple sentences also. Page 26 is typical, not unusual. The overall result is deadly. A major defect of the book is its historical inaccuracy. Soule admits that he always went back to The Trail Drivers of Texas to check his facts. Although Hunter’s work is the best book yet published on the trail drives, the oldtimers whose reminiscences it contains did not always get their facts straight. Although I did not search for errors, they were readily apparent, A few examples will suffice. On page 28 Soule gives the now discredited theory that “gringo” is de­ rived from the first two words of “Green Grow the Lilacs,” a song sung by the American army during the Mexican War. On page 102 he places Williamson County Texas, between Cameron and Hidalgo counties (they adjoin one another) and then later (accurately) north of Austin. On page 144 he has 5,000 cowboys herding 30,000 cattle near Abilene on May 15, 1871; that is one cowboy for every...

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