Sandhills Boy is the story of "a freckle-faced country boy, green as a gourd," growing up in the wild sandhills of West Texas and becoming author of many well-loved and critically-acclaimed Western novels: The Time It Never Rained, The Good Old Boys, The Day the Cowboys Quit , and some 50 others.
The son of a working cowboy and ranch foreman, Elmer Kelton learned at an early age that he had no talent for horses nor any of the cowboy's trade . . . but he did have a knack for story-telling. He graduated from the University if Texas and before becoming "the greatest of all Western writers" (by vote of the Western Writers of America, Inc,) was a soldier in Europe and a journalist in Texas.
Kelton writes with warm, nostalgic humor of his life in ranch and oil patch Texas during the Great Depression of his service in WW2 in France, Germany, and Czechoslovakia, and of the romantic circumstances which changed his life in the village of Ebensee, Austria. At a boat landing there, in October, 1945, he met a young woman, Anni Lipp, who became his wife and remained by his side for 60 years.
Filled with Kelton's sly humor and memorable anecdotes, Sandhills Boy is destined to be a classic in Western autobiography, a companion to Charlie Siringo's A Texas Cowboy and We Pointed Them North by Edward. C. "Teddy Blue" Abbott.
“Kelton, like fine wine, just keeps getting better and better.” ― Tulsa World
“...Elmer Kelton, a wily old cloudburst, imbues his Westerns with ancient myths and modern motifs that transcend cowboys and cattle trails.” ― Dallas Morning News
Description:
Sandhills Boy is the story of "a freckle-faced country boy, green as a gourd," growing up in the wild sandhills of West Texas and becoming author of many well-loved and critically-acclaimed Western novels: The Time It Never Rained, The Good Old Boys, The Day the Cowboys Quit , and some 50 others.
The son of a working cowboy and ranch foreman, Elmer Kelton learned at an early age that he had no talent for horses nor any of the cowboy's trade . . . but he did have a knack for story-telling. He graduated from the University if Texas and before becoming "the greatest of all Western writers" (by vote of the Western Writers of America, Inc,) was a soldier in Europe and a journalist in Texas.
Kelton writes with warm, nostalgic humor of his life in ranch and oil patch Texas during the Great Depression of his service in WW2 in France, Germany, and Czechoslovakia, and of the romantic circumstances which changed his life in the village of Ebensee, Austria. At a boat landing there, in October, 1945, he met a young woman, Anni Lipp, who became his wife and remained by his side for 60 years.
Filled with Kelton's sly humor and memorable anecdotes, Sandhills Boy is destined to be a classic in Western autobiography, a companion to Charlie Siringo's A Texas Cowboy and We Pointed Them North by Edward. C. "Teddy Blue" Abbott.
**
From Booklist
Writing with a perpetual wink, the most beloved western writer alive recounts his own story of growing up in Depression-era west Texas, the son of a hardworking cowboy who could "squeeze a nickel until the Indian rode the buffalo." It was evident early that young Elmer made a poor cowboy, prompting an inferiority complex noticeable even in this memoir. What results is a book more about the people who surrounded the nearly egoless Kelton--many of whom would eventually be transformed into characters in his fiction--from the ranches of Texas to a relatively peaceful stint in WWII Europe, where he met his Austrian bride, to his work as an agricultural journalist. He spends no more than a handful of pages glossing over his celebrated writing career, noting merely that he was grateful to have had a chance to hone his craft before the pulps died out and that he never did really know if his father approved. Although not terribly revealing, this rambling, anecdotal memoir will still be of interest to fans of traditional western fiction. Ian Chipman
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Review
“Kelton, like fine wine, just keeps getting better and better.” ― Tulsa World
“...Elmer Kelton, a wily old cloudburst, imbues his Westerns with ancient myths and modern motifs that transcend cowboys and cattle trails.” ― Dallas Morning News