"Early Americana" for [a] title names exactly the author's particular gift. All based on old tales collected from pioneers and from the children of pioneers, these stories present the poetry of early conquests. They are folklore fictionized. If they are, one and all, romantic stories, they are also true stories of quiet stern men and brave frontier women. Nor are the characters overdrawn or made to enact scenes of gun-play and violence. Violence is in the background, a kind of threat perhaps over the land, but the author is concerned chiefly with drawing character….
The tales based on the authentic life stories of some of these characters and familiar to any one who has lived in the Far West—are all told in vivid, dramatic pictures that remain in the reader's mind…. Conrad Richter chooses often a single trait or a typical action to emphasize and by that we know his character. He paints a single scene completely and we do not forget it as the story unfolds. He chooses sometimes as the mind through which the story is told, a young girl or a child unusually sensitive to the new atmosphere of the trail or the Western town. Few of his stories, in fact, use as narrator a man accustomed to and hardened by the wilderness. This very choice of a sensitive mind as the protagonist, allows Mr. Richter to present the strange poetry of his scene or his action, to give more dramatically the sturdy bravery and stoicism of the typical Western characters observed by the narrator….
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