The Bad Lands by Oakley Hall (1978)

The Bad Lands
by Oakley Hall
Publisher: Atheneum
Copyright: 1978
First Edition

In all of contemporary American literature, there are surprisingly few novels of substance about the tumultuous drama that characterized the Western experience. The Big Sky, The Oxbow Incident, A Distant Trumpet, True Grit, Warlock. And now, The Bad Lands.

Oakley Hall, the author of Warlock, once again explores the heart and soul of the American West at a crucial period, this time the mid-1880s, and in The Bad Lands he takes a long hard look at the visions and delusions, the ideals and the rapacity of the men whose contradictory natures blighted their grand designs.

Th major characters are LORD MACHRAY, an adventurous and visionary Scotsman whose irrepressible dreams of power and glory bring him to the Dakotas, where he intends to create a cattle-raising, meat-packing and shipping empire; ANDREW LIVINGSTON, a young New York banker-politician who, after the deaths of his wife and daughter, comes to the West to regain his equilibrium and finds himself drawn into a stormy comradeship with Machray; YULE HARDY, a rancher whose fierce individuality places him in violent opposition to Machray's exalted schemes; MARY HARDY, Yule's daughter, whose fragile, crippled body conceals a spirit as defiant as her father's; BILL DRIGGS, a hunter who remembers the idyllic past and fights against the encroachment of civilization; CORA BENBOW, a whorehouse madam who once loved Driggs but is currently the mistress and confidante of Machray; and JAKE BOUTELLE, an erstwhile friend of Driggs, and now a swaggering mercenary in the hire of a vigilante force.

The Bad Lands is concerned with a variety of exploitations: of nature by man, of game-country by cattle, of public grazing lands by nesters claiming acreage, of human life and human freedom by human ruthlessness, of the old by the new.

Condition: Used. Hardcover. Dust cover shows discoloration, shelf wear. Pages may be tanning from age. Previous owner's "Library Of" stamp is on the front endpaper.

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