Bette Hargrave
Dear Friends and Readers: It’s January, 2021, for you and December 10, 2020, for me as I write. COVID-19 is still running rampant. Please wear masks, wash hands, and keep distance!
Doreen Taylor, the Sun Lakes Country Club Head Librarian, a few years ago brought me into the Library Volunteer Group, and a little over a year ago asked me to write for you.
As some of you will and have recognized, I’m an untrained, novice writer, but I’m also an exhaustive reader of mostly fiction, and I enjoy sharing with you.
In 1964-65, I read for the first time a Louis L’Amour paperback novel and was hooked. My husband was attending college in Tucson, Ariz., and I was working as a waitress at the Pioneer Hotel to help support him and five children. When did I have time to read, you ask? I wonder now, but I did, and one of the delights I found regarding Mr. L’Amour’s stories was that if he described a place, town, or mountain, it was really there currently or in the past. I fell in love with Arizona in our years we spent in Tucson.
A quote from Louis L’Amour, “I think of myself in the oral tradition—as a troubadour, a village tale teller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way I’d like to be remembered—as a storyteller. A good storyteller.”
Many consider Mr. L’Amour a historical fiction writer, a chronicler of the settling of our western frontier. For me, his fiction has substance and is never just a shoot-‘em-up western, and for our female readers, there are real women and children’s lives portrayed. It wasn’t just the men who settled our country! LOL
The Cherokee Trail, by Louis L’ Amour, published in 1982, is one of my favorites. The Cherokee Trail received its name from the party of Cherokee Indians who established this route while heading to California gold fields looking for a place to settle their people. This story concerns the Overland Stage Company, their route north from Denver, Colo., through Laporte to Laramie, and one of the first women to manage a stage station. Mary Breydon, her daughter, an Irish girl, and a hawk-featured young man with a handgun and rifle traveling west in a stagecoach with its poor springs and rough primitive roads is just the beginning of a fun, suspenseful tale.
There are politics, gang activity, Indian attacks, physical danger, a young orphan boy, a crusty older horse handler, male attraction for Mary, and friendships. A very enjoyable read for these times of worry and fear for our loved ones’ health. Please do check out our great selection of westerns.
A list of our newest Best Sellers:
Daylight, by David Baldacci; The Sentinel, by Lee Child; The Law of Innocence, by Michael Connelly; Fortune and Glory, by Janet Evanovich; Moonflower Murders, by Anthony Horowitz; The Return, by Nicholas Sparks; All That Glitters, by Danielle Steel. Also on order in large print are two great selections: Piece of My Heart, by Mary Higgins Clark, and The Awakening: The Dragon Heart Legacy, Book 1, by Nora Roberts.
The SLCC Library is thankful for the monetary donations and support from our Lions Clubs for the purchase of large print new Best Sellers. Thank you!
Happy reading and Happy New Year!