Savage Country

Hunters, skinners, and teamsters slaughter herds of buffalo on the Old West plains of 1873 in Olmstead’s ninth novel, in an orgy of killing for profit on a grand and wasteful scale. Olmstead (Coal Black Horse) presents a grim, gruesome tale of buffalo hunting and harsh, deadly frontier life. Elizabeth Coughlin, recently widowed, is set to lose her ranch to a cheating banker named Whitechurch. Desperate to pay off her debt, she and her brother-in-law Michael organize a large hunting party to go into Comanche territory to find the last massive herd of buffalo, which have been hunted nearly to extinction. Despite a warning that Whitechurch will try to kill them, Michael and Elizabeth lead the party to the hunting grounds, enduring prairie fires, floods, heat, cold, fatigue, injuries, illness, gory evidence of Comanche atrocities, and the ever-present danger of ambush by Whitechurch’s gunmen. Michael is a stone-cold killer, patient advisor, and teacher of fieldcraft, and Elizabeth shows remarkable courage, judgment, and strength of character as the leader of the unwashed, profane, rough men in the bloody business of killing and skinning a thousand buffalo a day when not killing each other. This is a powerful depiction of the brutality of the Old West, where life was cheap and easily taken. (Sept.)