Wondrous Times on the Frontier

In his first nonfiction work since Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee , Brown turns his attention to the social and cultural history of the 19th-century West. Observing certain similarities between the emigrants and Chaucer's pilgrims, he notes that their rates of progress were about the same and that each group had representatives from the trades and professions. Brown describes some famous visitors to the West: grand duke Alexis Romanoff, on a buffalo hunt; Oscar Wilde, wearing a sunflower in his lapel; Horace Greeley. He examines the tall tale and practical jokes played on greenhorns and tenderfeet, noting that the young Teddy Roosevelt, recuperating from respiratory ailments, was the butt of many. Brown writes about frontier lawyers and courtroom theatrics, ministers, schoolteachers, doctors, newspapermen, gold seekers, women, soldiers, actors, cowboys in this vivid portrait of the diverse elements comprising the westward movement. Paperback rights to HarperCollins. (Nov.)