Customer Reviews

The Divorce Seekers: A Photo Memoir of a Nevada Dude Wrangler

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Half a century old and I've only lived one year west of the Mississippi, yet the West still seduces me! Cowboys and log cabins, railroads and dude ranches... To find a book brimming with stories and photographs of no-names and celebrities on a Nevada divorce ranch in the 1940's, that was a nostalgia trip; then to read the deeper lines of a hundred romances lost and found, that was a serious journey into the evolving role of women. If only I had a family room with a roaring fireplace, THE DIVORCE SEEKERS would be one of a half dozen books strewn generously across the coffee table. Instead, this intriguing volume invites people in my waiting area at work to reminisce, to feel, to laugh. Sometimes they look like little birds, circling, chirping and pointing toward this picture or that. You'd think they found the last worm on earth!

Jeff Watson
Washington, D.C. (USA)

McGee discussing a fascinating era in our social history, and I'm happy to see some sort of documentation of the period, but I felt that there were some things that detract from the enjoyment of the book.
One is the pictures. The quality of many is very poor, and very rarely is the reproduction good. I know the pictures are old, but lots of them are very hard to make out. More distracting is the fact that they are often not closely related to the text. It often seemed as though McGee found a bunch of old pictures and felt he had to use all of them regardless of their quality or relation to his text. And maybe he was given a quota of solid text pages? I suppose some of the pictures are supposed to be representative, but they're often many years (as many as 80) off from events in the text and frequently of people who don't figure in the text at all (just a bunch of folks around a generic craps table in Reno, for instance, or little tiny horseback riders off in the distance). At first, I'd read the captions trying to figure out how the pictures related to what I just read. I finally gave up and started just glancing at the caption to see IF the picture related.
More disturbing is the change in writing style from section to section. The author does best when he's doing straight reporting. He's much less successful at dialog. I doubt that anyone would remember conversations in as much as much detail as McGee puts on paper, so I'm surmising that he's creating dialog that gives the sense of the conversation rather than reporting verbatim. I hope so, anyway, because I can't imagine one individual having the misfortune of meeting so many people who talk like characters in badly written fiction.
Worse than the general dialog is the dialog in the sex scenes. Fortunately, there weren't too many of them. The writing for these changes dramatically. In addition to the poor dialog, we have to put up with all the cliches: forward-thrusting nipples, pert breasts, etc. And then there were the "kisses [that] devoured me" (note - the kisses did the devouring, not the woman; didn't know that was possible). Sometimes, things just sound plain silly: "To my male surprise"? Male surprise is different from female surprise or just surprise in general? The level of writing is embarrassing - maybe suitable for the lower ranks of cheesy paperback romances.
I like a good sex scene - if it fits in the book. While McGee's subtitle tells us this is a memoir and we expect personal stories, insights, recollections, etc., the detailed sex scenes here are out of place. I kept waiting for there to be a reason for them - maybe after this night of ecstasy the girl was going to come back and demand marriage or something? - but they seem pointless. They don't actually contribute to the narrative. Bill has sex with so-and-so. So-and-so leaves the narrative, never to reappear - but we got to hear about "sensual pleasure," "hair spread over the pillows," ambrosial fragrance, wiggling in pur joy, and so on. Ick. The scenes come across as poorly written score-keeping and have nothing to do with the ostensible premise of the book.
While all the dialog sounds like the first attempts of someone who's only read pulp fiction, at least the non-sex dialog scenes give us a sense of time, place, and events.
I was fascinated by the period and individual's portrayed in the book, but felt that McGee needed to decide at the outset whether he was writing nonfiction or a novel based on fact. He didn't mix the styles well. A skilled editor could perhaps have pointed him in a single direction and greatly improved the book.

If you love history, Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and cowboys, this book is for you. Being from Minnesota and working at Lake Tahoe in the mid-70's and now being a resident of Reno, I found this book to be a lot more than it's title indicates. Yes, the Reno area was known for being the Divorce Capital of the World, but Bill McGee takes the reader into the back mountains of the Sierras, into the world of New York socialites settling in Virginia City and into what must have been a unique place to live and work - the Flying ME Ranch. The Flying ME was located in what I think is one of the most beautiful spots in Northern Nevada today - Franktown. Even before I knew of the dude ranch, this spot between Carson City and Reno is one of beautiful ranches with white picket fences, Ponderosa Pines and mountain views second to none.

Bill and Sandra take the reader back to a time that was unique and one that will probably never exist again. The photography is wonderful and probably tells a story all by itself.

This is definitely a worthwhile read and a great coffee table book!

D. Geraghty

Reno, Nevada

THE DIVORCE SEEKERS has all the potential for a good film...a great setting in 1940s Nevada, interesting characters, cowboys, beautiful and intelligent women, a little-known social epoch, and terrific story potential for conflict, love interest and resolution.

A great reflection on the 'not so long ago' good old days.

Bill and Sandra McGee have authored a fascinating account of an almost forgotten era of the Old West. The old days of the romantic Nevada dude ranch unfold in a format reminiscent of "The Love Boat". Told through the eyes of real life cowboy, Bill McGee, we see east coast patrons come and go through the gates of the famous Flying M E Guest ranch. The dude guests are mostly women arrived to establish a six (6) week residency before securing a quickie divorce. And while lounging at the Flying M E, who could blame a girl for romancing a handsome cowboy? The wonderful photographs alone make this coffee table book well worth its purchase. Fans of the old west should seriously consider adding this fine book to their collection.

The McGees have pulled together a remarkable historic and pictoral event in Nevada history. Nevada's easy divorce laws attracted the rich and famous to well known Divorce Ranches, complete with horses and swimming pools. Bill McGee was a wrangler at one of the better known "ranches". McGee introduced divorcees to horses and the spectacular Sierra Nevada Mountains. As the daughter of a former owner of one of the nearby smaller divorce sites (we didn't offer horses or a pool), I was impressed with the results of the McGee's research. Many of the photos have not been produced before; they interviewed many of the ranch's former "guests" and provided information not available earlier. This book is truly a collector's item. The Divorce Ranch years brought many new residents from the East who subsequently enriched northern Nevada's cultural community. Before the McGee's this Nevada saga was largely overlooked.

A great and very personal account of the times when everybody who was anybody spent six weeks in Reno to cut the bands that had bound them in their homes,churches, cities and states. Provacative text supported by even more provacative photographs.

Biographer:Adriana and veteran attorney: Tom Williams, San Francisco