Customer Reviews

Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy

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I've read all three of Hobson's excellent books about his adventures in the Canadian wilderness. My son, who is a real cowboy in Montana, told me about the books, saying, "These books tell the real story, mom--this is what it's like out here, particularly during the long, lonely, winter days and nights." Hobson's writing style, simple yet eloquent imagery, is perfect. I actually got chills when reading about grizzly attacks and those 70-degree below nights when both man and beast had to work to stay alive. Great stories, great writing!

This enjoyable and well-written cowboy memoir takes readers to the hinterlands of central British Columbia during the war years of 1939-1942. The author and his partner Panhandle Phillips take over the two-million-acre Frontier Cattle Company, located in grassland valleys among the mountain ranges, several days' ride from the nearest town and over 200 miles from the nearest rail line. It is a land where winters are severe, and the first challenge facing them is a December cattle drive that ends in near-disaster as the men are overtaken by a fierce blizzard and sub-zero temperatures.

The son of an admiral in the U.S. Navy, Hobson is an educated Easterner living a life of pioneering adventure on one of the last western frontiers on the continent. His story is peopled with a large cast of memorable characters, including cowhands, ranchers, storekeepers, and Indians. His gifts as a writer are many, as he intensifies the suspense and drama of several high-risk enterprises and fully relishes the humor in others. The attempt to transport a herd of wild horses by night from an offshore island to the Vancouver stockyards is told with a masterful grasp of knee-slapping farce. There's even a little romance, as our cowboy hero goes in breathless search of the girl of his dreams, armed only with a snapshot of her standing beside a prize Jersey bull. Readers will also enjoy Paul St. Pierre's short stories and novels set a decade later in the same remote ranch country.

AS exciting as the other two books.Humerous,yet portrays the adventure and hardship of that era.