Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

A Tribute to Ron Scheer

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I was very sad to learn this week of the passing of Ron Scheer, Western author and blogger at Buddies in the Saddle, who had been battling cancer for the past year. Ron’s blog was one of those that I read most avidly from around the time I started this one, and his opinions on my own posts and writing were always valued. He was an enthusiast for all things Western, and early Western fiction in particular, and his detailed posts on the history of the genre and reviews of those early books eventually turned into a fascinating two-volume study, How the West Was Written (you can read my review of Volume I here). Ron was one of my biggest influences among present-day writers and blogging friends—his always-interesting posts and the ensuing discussions in the comments led me to fiction, nonfiction, movies, and the hundred different side trails that branched off from those discoveries. There are so many things about the West and Westerns that I might never have learned if it wasn’t for him.

Learning of his passing made me think a little about my grandfather, who passed away in 2009, two years before I published my first book. Grandpa always loved hearing about his grandchildren’s accomplishments, and he was also a reader, so I’ve often thought of how lovely it would have been to be able to show him my own published book. Somewhat in the same way, since Ron was kind enough to read my first book of Western short stories and spoke well of them, I would have liked to have been able to send him a full-length Western novel someday—a mature work, so to speak—and have been able to say, “Look how far I’ve come…and some of it was surely because of your influence and encouragement.” I wish I had had that chance.

Ron had Wanderlust Creek and Other Storiesin the currently-reading section of his blog sidebar at the time he stopped posting in February. I do hope he liked it.

My thoughts and prayers are with Ron’s family. He will be sadly missed.

Favorite TV Episode Blogathon: The Virginian, “Siege”

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When I heard about the Favorite TV Episode Blogathon being hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts, an event focusing on single episodes of classic television, it sounded to me like the perfect opportunity to write about an episode of my favorite TV Western, The Virginian, something I’d occasionally thought about doing before. The choice of episode was an easy one: an entry from the show’s second season, “Siege.”

“Siege” features a device often used by Western series when they wanted a change of scenery: sending one of the regular characters off on a journey, where adventure will most certainly befall. In this case it’s Trampas (Doug McClure), who, after striking it rich in an all-night poker game, decides to go back to the little town of Logan, New Mexico, where he spent some time several years before, to pay off the debts he left behind and visit some old friends. He’s particularly looking forward to seeing Carole (Elinor Donahue), a girl he once courted before her disapproving brother, banker Duke Logan (Philip Carey) ran him out of town—but finds that Carole is now happily married to the new town marshal, Brett Cole (Ron Hayes).

Now with no reason to stay longer, Trampas heads out of town to visit some former employers before going back to Medicine Bow—but his trip takes a darker turn when he finds the elderly couple have been robbed and murdered by marauding Comancheros. Tracking down and capturing the killers, he brings them back to Logan, where the authorities seem strangely reluctant to imprison or try the men.

The situation as explained by Duke, along with Trampas’ friend Charlie Sanchez, the amiable Mexican hotelkeeper (Nestor Paiva) is that the Comancheros essentially run a protection racket in Logan—they are allowed the run of the town so long as they mostly behave themselves, and the townspeople can’t lift a hand against them under threat of what the Comancheros would do if they did. Since the murders took place outside the town limits, the only way the killers can be tried is if Trampas stays to press charges. Comanchero leader Lopez (Joseph Campanella) wants his men released or else, and Duke, determined to pacify Lopez, puts all the pressure he can on Trampas to drop the charges and leave—persuading his sister Carole, whom he has convinced to share his views, to use her influence with Trampas to the same effect. But meanwhile, Trampas’ determination to see justice done is having its effect on Brett, who has slowly awakened to a sense of his duty as town marshal and is now also determined to back Trampas, much to his brother-in-law’s anger and his wife’s dismay.

Much as I like the usual episodes of The Virginian set around Medicine Bow and Shiloh Ranch, “Siege” is a favorite because of its engrossing plot—which, as it gradually builds to its suspenseful climax, becomes a clever variation on the High Noon-style stand for justice—and its overall high quality. The guest cast is excellent, and the script by Don Mullally is perhaps the best thing about it, filled with practical and moral conflicts for multiple characters and keen, layered dialogue that fits together like pieces of a puzzle. “Siege” has an almost cinematic feel; a self-contained story running an hour and a quarter (the running time of the show was 90 minutes with commercials, the first Western TV series of that length), it’s very like a compact Western movie. Whether as a standout entry in a good series, or a stand-alone Western for fans of the genre, it’s definitely worth watching.

Friday’s Forgotten Books: The Turmoil by Booth Tarkington

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When I read The Turmoil for the first time a few years ago, it was a novel that I liked moderately, but after mulling it over a good deal and reading it a second time, it has firmly ensconced itself as my second-favorite book by Booth Tarkington. Written first of what he would later group together and call his Growth trilogy, it is set chronologically after The Magnificent Ambersons, in what we’re given to understand is the same nameless “midland city” (likely based on Tarkington’s native city of Indianapolis), now in the full grip and roar of the industrial age. At the center of the novel is the Sheridan family, wealthy owners of a business empire worth millions. Its plot focuses around sensitive youngest son Bibbs Sheridan—the sickly one and the “odd one” of the family, who hates the noise and smoke and rush and greed of the city, and wants no part of his family’s business. Family patriarch James Sheridan Sr., meanwhile, is exactly the opposite—a memorable, larger-than-life character, noisy and blunt and boisterous, who loves the noise and smoke and the continual battle to build bigger and own more as much as Bibbs hates it. Completely incapable of understanding Bibbs’ feelings or his wish to be a writer instead, Sheridan is bent on molding his incomprehensible youngest into his own image, and oblivious to the cracks appearing in the foundation of his family.

Next door to the Sheridans’ new mansion live the Vertrees family, the remnants of one of the city’s “old families,” whom Sheridan’s daughter Edith and daughter-in-law Sibyl are anxious to cultivate in order to “get in with the right people” in society, something the nouveau-riche Sheridans have yet to accomplish. Unbeknownst to them, the Vertreeses’ fortunes have declined and they’re now living on the very edge of poverty—their only hope is for daughter Mary to charm and marry Jim Sheridan, the oldest of the clan, something she sets out to do as a deliberate sacrifice for her parents’ sake. But a self-revelation on Mary’s part and an unexpected catastrophe combine to put an end to this…and in the aftermath, a friendship gradually grows between Mary and Bibbs, a friendship that inspires him with the will to live and to endure the work his father has pushed him into. Yet trouble still lies ahead, as Sibyl now cherishes a grudge against Mary and intends to exact bitter revenge on her…

When I started to read The Turmoil for the first time, I thought it would be hard to take a book seriously with a protagonist named Bibbs. But after just a few chapters I had forgotten all about his name (which is explained early in the story), and by the middle of the second reading I just loved him. Tarkington demonstrated in other books his ability to create characters you want to smack upside the head, but here he proves an equal ability to create, in Bibbs Sheridan and Mary Vertrees, characters you love and whom your heart aches for, so that you long for things to turn out well for them. Even Sheridan Sr., exasperating as he is, you can never really hate; there are moments, especially toward the end, where you feel a kind of fondness for him in his bluntness and rough good intentions. All the characters, good and bad, are drawn with the same keen, understated insight that is probably what I like best about Tarkington’s writing, and the story is not without its moments of joy and humor in the midst of the drama.

I think what may have left me feeling a little ambivalent on that first reading was that Tarkington doesn’t seem to pull a definite conclusion out of the themes of the book—he doesn’t say or give us to understand whether it’s Bibbs or his father who is definitively right, or what the solution to the chaos of industrialization is. Considering this now, though, I wonder if that’s because Tarkington was living and writing in the very midst of that era: maybe he honestly didn’t know. He offers a suggestion of hope in Bibbs’ imaginings about the future near the end, a note which rings a bit false a hundred years later, when we can see it didn’t quite turn out that way. But unlike other, “greater” novelists, he does one thing definitely right: he brings his characters’ story to a fitting, satisfying resolution. If there is a message of any kind in The Turmoil, the one I sensed was that it’s possible to find personal fulfillment and happiness even in the midst of a chaotic society. The final scene of the book has to be one of my favorite book endings now; it’s just so beautiful, and…perfect.

The Turmoil, first published in 1915, is in the public domain and available for free online. I recommend the Project Gutenberg edition, since one Amazon review says the Kindle version is missing some sections of the book in the form of journal entries. Friday’s Forgotten Books is a weekly blog event hosted by Patti Abbott.