- Home
- Texas Tradition Series
- fiction
- The Smiling Country
For Professors
Desk CopyFor Media
Review CopyThe Smiling Country
Series: Texas Tradition Series
by Elmer Kelton
Published by: TCU Press
272 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in
For Professors: Exam Copies
In the 1978 novel, The Good Old Boys, Hewey Calloway could not abandon the footloose cowboy way of life and settle down to farming, even for Spring Renfro, the woman he loved. Twenty years later, in this sequel, Elmer Kelton brought Hewey back, older, wiser, and badly banged up trying to break a renegade bronc. His wandering days are over, because of his injuries, because of fences that cut up the range, because of trucks and automobiles. But, how will Hewey handle the new circumstances of his life? And how will Spring react to his return? Readers who fell in love with Hewey will delight in seeing him back and following his new and different adventures.
Elmer Kelton is the author of over forty novels, published over the last fifty years, all dealing with Texas and the West.
His best-known books include The Time It Never Rained, about the drought of the 1950s, The Day the Cowboys Quit, about the 1883 cowboy strike at Tascosa, Texas, The Man Who Rode Midnight, about an old rancher fighting creeping development around his ranch and remembering the time he rode the famous bucking bronc, Midnight, and The Wolf and the Buffalo, which contrasts a Comanche chief, whose world is falling apart, and a “buffalo” or African-American soldier, a former slave who sees opportunity ahead for the first time. Kelton has written about the span of Texas history from the Alamo to the late twentieth century, always with a firm hand on historical accuracy, character development, and the inevitability of change.
Elmer Kelton has won the Western Writers of America Spur Award six times and the Western Heritage (Wrangler) Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame four times. Western Writers of America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Western Literature Association have honored him for lifetime achievement.
His best-known books include The Time It Never Rained, about the drought of the 1950s, The Day the Cowboys Quit, about the 1883 cowboy strike at Tascosa, Texas, The Man Who Rode Midnight, about an old rancher fighting creeping development around his ranch and remembering the time he rode the famous bucking bronc, Midnight, and The Wolf and the Buffalo, which contrasts a Comanche chief, whose world is falling apart, and a “buffalo” or African-American soldier, a former slave who sees opportunity ahead for the first time. Kelton has written about the span of Texas history from the Alamo to the late twentieth century, always with a firm hand on historical accuracy, character development, and the inevitability of change.
Elmer Kelton has won the Western Writers of America Spur Award six times and the Western Heritage (Wrangler) Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame four times. Western Writers of America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Western Literature Association have honored him for lifetime achievement.