Over on the Dry Side [Paperback]

Louis L'Amour (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Bantam Books (1995)
• ASIN: B000Q938ZE
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

More About the Author

"I think of myself in the oral tradition--as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man in the shadows of a campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered--as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs, including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, and miner, and was an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontiers and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are more than 300 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

The recipient of many great honor and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist to ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour publishing tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marvelous - One of L'Amour's Best, June 21, 2002

By 

Bill Peters (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Over on the Dry Side (Paperback)

Top notch writing. The setting for this book has a quality that draws me back to it over and over again much like Mountain Valley War or Guns of the Timberlands. Its about my all time favorite L'Amour book.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Louis L'Amour's Best Westerns, February 16, 2005

By 

Thomas L. Ogren (San Luis Obispo, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Over on the Dry Side (Paperback)

If you, like me, love most of the books by Louis L'Amour, and you've never read Over On The Dry Side, do check it out. This is the story of a young fellow who grows up poor and lonely, and loses his mother at a young age. He and his hard-luck dad find a carefully built deserted cabin and they move in and start ranching. Trouble soon finds them, but so too does a mysterious stranger.

Up high in the surrounding dry hills there is another finely built cabin, built by the same long gone and mysterious man, a man who supposedly had stashed a big cache of gold before he was killed.

In the nearby hills there is a band of killers who want that gold. Over on the Dry Side is a mystery as much as it is a western. Clues are found and the reader along with the characters in the book ...all are trying to figure out where the stash is, and what it is, as it may be gold, but may not be either. The story is told almost always through the eyes of the young boy, who is about 16. Up in the hills in the other hidden and deserted cabin he finds a little pot of flowers and realizes that a female, a girl probably, left those flowers. He starts to daydream about this girl, pictures her as young and beautiful, as well she does turn out to be. She however, isn't exactly as he has envisioned her to be...she's beautiful but not like he has "seen" her in his mind. As the book evolves, the boy becomes very jealous of the stranger, the man who turns out to be the brother of the original man who had built the cabins. The story is compelling at all points, the pages turn and you have to keep on reading. Told through the eyes of the young boy, the story has a fresh feel to it, and the reader gets to really care about him and what will happen. In all respects, one of L'Amour's finest books; a real pleasure to read. Do yourself a favor and check out On The Dry Side. I predict, you'll love it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's got a Chantry, it must be good!, December 23, 2004

By 

J. Pace "Darrell Pace" (Tuscumbia, AL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Over on the Dry Side (Paperback)

I have noticed that Louis L'Amour books with certain characters often seem to stand out. It's as though he gave special attention to special characters. This book is no exception. One of the main characters is called Owen Chantry. He is somewhat mysterious, but the Chantry name is quite popular in L'Amour novels. This book was also unique as L'Amour gave us another character, Doby, a sixteen year old boy. Doby speaks in first person. We read his every thought and plan. We see how lonely he is living far from civilization. He dreamed about about a "golden haired girl." We even hear his poor english skills throughout the book. L'Amour is a master at capturing "country talk." Of course the book has the regular bad guys, killing and even treasure. But, this time it is quite different. Get this book and read it. It is short and easy to read, but interesting all the way through.