The Treble V: The Legacy of a Cattle Baron of the Old West by R. Guild Gray (review)

Reviews 85 Yet the book does what many more literary works (like House Made of Dawn) fail to do: interest you immediately and hold you to the last page. And of course L’Amour arranged it so that a sequel is clearly possible, if Joe decides to return to the Soviet Union to get revenge on Colonel Zamatev—his already-ruined military intelligence kidnapper—which Joe has sworn to do. STARR JENKINS Cal Poly State University The Treble V: The Legacy of a Cattle Baron of the Old West. By R. Guild Gray. (New York: Vantage Press, 1986. 669 pages, $18.95.) The Treble V is the ambitious chronicle of a ranching family in north­ eastern Nevada, near the present town of Elko. Beginning in the mountain man era and ending in 1937, the novel spans six generations. Most of the action takes place from 1848 to 1898, and the book includes a great deal of interesting historical detail about Nevada’s evolution as a territory and state. Furthermore, the book shows a good sense of the Great Basin country—the natural environment and man’srelation to it. In order to enjoy these pleasant features, the reader must push through vast drifts of flawed writing. The proofreading is shameful, with scores and scores of typographical errors. This may account for some of the negligent punctuation, but there are also numerous distracting errors in the basic use of apostrophes, semicolons, and commas. Beyond that, there are thousands of sentences that impede the reading with clumsy punctuation and syntax. The narrative point of view wanders from one character to another with no appar­ ent sense of artistry. Major characters are idealized and overdrawn, while minor characters are stereotyped. Dialogue is frequently stilted and labored. In diction there is a tendency towards anachronistic word choice such as “happenings” and “life style,” pet words like “remonstrate” and “copious,” and generally glib language. One is tempted to scoff at such a book, with its pretenses and excesses, but it is not a bad book. It is the serious product of a vast amount of research and planning, and it could appeal to readers interested in Nevada history or to scholars surveying historical fiction about Nevada. JOHN D. NESBITT Eastern Wyoming College ...