Valley of the Sun

A Collection of Louis L'Amour Pulp Western Stories

You never know what will be found at a library book sale. One of my finds a few weeks ago was a hardback Louis L’Amour collection Valley of the Sun. This is a Bantam Book hardback published in 1995. The book contains nine stories over 134 pages. Bantam had started reprinting L’Amour’s pulp fiction in the early 1980s when Carroll & Graf had first published some paperback collection of public domain material. Bantam responded with “official” collections. Law of the Desert Born, Dutchman’s Flat, Night Over the Solomons, The Outlaws of Mesquite were all story collections that you could find on the spinner rack at the local Dairy Mart or drug store.

The Bantam paperbacks never had any copyright information on where and when the stories originally appeared. Here are the contents and original magazine appearance for contents in Valley of the Sun:

We Shaped the Land with Our Guns Texas Rangers, April 1951

West of the Pilot Range Texas Rangers, May 1947

When a Texan Takes Over 2-Gun Western, Feb. 1954

No Man’s Mesa Western Novels and Short Stories, Aug. 1952

Gila Crossing Complete Western Book Magazine, Sept. 1956

Medicine Ground Texas Rangers, April 1948

Valley of the Sun Range Riders Western, Jan. 1950

That Slash Seven Kid Rio Kid Western, March 1952

In Victorio’s Country Giant Western, June 1949

Louis L’Amour is not my favorite western author. I like Gordon D. Shirreffs, T. V. Olsen, Lewis B. Patten more as they are more hard-boiled in delivery. I can see why L’Amour became so popular. He melded the pre-WW2 pulp mythic western with real life elements from the Old West. He is generally an easy read and you don’t feel depressed after reading a Louis L’Amour book. Vox Day has mentioned L’Amour’s heroes are Deltas in the socio-sexual hierarchy which is what I have observed.

The contents to this book are all stories from western pulp magazine when they were in their twilight. None of the stories are even novelette length. Your lean, weather beaten protagonist comes up against a problem and figures it out in around 15 pages. There are three series characters: Kim Sartrain the Ranger, the Cactus Kid, and Red Clanahan. The frustrating part is not all the stories for these characters are gathered together in one volume. There are six Kim Sartrain stories, five Cactus Kid stories, and two Red Clanahan stories. All these in one volume would have made a good volume of pulp western short stories. I like logical story collections, not assorted grab bags.

I found it best to space these stories out with at least two days in between. They can become repetitive in the setup and resolution. It is a good way to wind down for a half hour before going to bed. There was a paperback edition that is currently available. L’Amour must have still been making money for Bantam Books in the 1990s to warrant this slender hardback instead of the usual mass-market paperback. L’Amour was one of the great pulp magazine survivors along with John D. MacDonald, Poul Anderson, John Jakes, and probably a few others I am not thinking off right now. Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott certainly owe their careers to CBS adapting L’Amour to T.V. in the late 70s and early 1980s.