Customer Reviews

Sandhills Boy: The Winding Trail of a Texas Writer

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is Elmer Kelton at his best. He talks about his childhood days in various locations in West Texas, about the oilfield days that followed and parralled the "Cowboying" days, and about his joining the army and being stationed in various areas of Europe, with the primary empahsis on Austria, where he met his one true love.

I have read everything that Mr. Kelton has written, and every time another book comes out, I buy it. He truly is the very best when it comes to showing the face and grit of those early West Texans.

Fortunately, though he grew up on a ranch in West Texas, Elmer Kelton by his own admission did not make a good cowboy. Instead, he became one of the best writers of historical western fiction, and this is his personal story. Born in 1926, the oldest of four boys, his father the foreman of a large ranch near Midland, Texas, Kelton devotes much of this autobiography to his early years and what it was like for his family during the Depression. Somewhat shy and bookish, he chose a career in journalism, interrupted while he was at the University of Texas by a year in the Army at the end of WWII. Stationed in Austria, he met his wife Anni, and he tells of their courtship, her immigration to the U.S., and their life together in West Texas.

Readers hoping for more of a story about his struggles, emergence, and recognition as a writer may be disappointed that he has so little to say about that. My favorite of his novels, "The Day the Cowboys Quit," gets only a brief mention. I would love to have learned more about the historical research and the creative choices that went into the writing of that book. I have also wondered how his more popular fiction, such as the Texas Rangers trilogy, manages to be both action-packed and historically accurate - unlike writers like Louis L'Amour, who focus mainly on the action.

All in all, Kelton fans will enjoy this book. It is a congenial read, self-effacing in many ways, and even a little apologetic, as if he regrets that he was never a "good cowboy." The chapters are illustrated with about two dozen photographs, mostly from the 1930s and 1940s. He gives the last word to his wife, Anni, who contributes the final chapter.

Elmer Kelton's "Sandhills Boy" is one of the best non-fiction books I've read. Kelton takes the reader on a trip through real life events of a bashful young boy growing up in Texas, to the war in Europe where he found the love of his life, and back home to grinding out his profession as a writer. A very creative writer who, unfortunately, recently departed. The reader won't want to put this book down until finishing the last page.

I am not a reader of novels and fiction, but I am very interested in how writers work, what makes them tick, how their lives have been lived. This is the memoir of Elmer Kelton, a great writer of novels, western novels, and also a writer for both newspapers and magazines for most of his life. He was a member of the Western Writers of America, and to top it off he was a Texan, raised in Crane, Texas, and a combat veteran of WWII. This book is like he has opened himself up to the reader, warts and all. His writing here reveals an honest, shy man, whose parents were of humble origins, and he broke from that tradition of ranching to go to the University of Texas and study writing. The book takes you through his youth, his shyness, his entry into the army and World War Two. His injury in Euroope, and his meeting of a young Austrian girl, whom he fell in love with and eventually brought her back to Texas and married her (they were married over 50 yrs). His struggling through the University of Texas at Austin, and starting work at a newspaper, writing pulp stories at night on his typewriter..and eventually working his way into various livestock magazines as his bread and butter, but still writing novels in his spare time, and becoming one of the most well known Western writers in America. The book is written in an easy to read, and engrossing manner, the more read, the less able I was to put the book down. Elmer died in 2009 but his legend lives on, and from reading this book it is like reading a letter left to his survivors, telling the story of his life and the times and places he lived and worked, the people he met, and the enjoyment and sadness in his life. Highly recommended.

I didn't grow up in west Texas, but I spent a couple months in San Angelo over 30 years ago, on temporary duty with the army at Goodfellow AF Base there. It was my first time in Texas, and what I remember most is the vastness of the plain that stretched away from GAFB, and how you could watch a storm approaching from miles away. It was kind of a topographical revelation to this Michigan kid. Kelton's description of his youth on a dry land ranch near Midland, TX, made me remember those days. Since Kelton wrote more than 60 books in his lifetime - and I've read a few of them - I was not surprised at the sterling quality of this memoir. When he told of being a 17 year-old student at UT Austin in 1941 when the US entered WWII, and still to shy to talk to the girls who vastly outnumbered the "men" on campus, I was reminded of the Iowa farm memoirs of Curtis Harnack, who was in basically the same boat as a too-young student at tiny Grinell College at the same time. Kelton easily makes his story a kind of everyman tale, telling how his father had very little patience with his teenage sons when they worked for him, expecting them to just "know" how to do things without his always having to explain. The truth is fathers always expect more of their sons than they do of other people's children, or even of paid employees. I remember it well. He also tells of how difficult it was for his father to express his true feelings - aside from anger and impatience - regarding his sons. Been there too. Kelton's time in the army during the closing days of the war are also tellingly described - the cold and hunger, the fear and the loneliness. Much space is devoted to how he met his wife in Austria at the end of the war, how they fell in love and dealt with all the red tape of bringing her to America for a marriage that would last for over 60 years. There is plenty here about west Texas, about its harshness and its beauty, and especially about its people. It is filled with anecdotes about family members, ranch hands, cowboys, and various other characters that Kelton rubbed up against in his 83 years of living. Kelton died in August of this year, but his books about Texas and the West will be around for a long time. I hope this particular book will endure too. It's a good one. - Tim Bazzett, author of SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA

For anyone who is familiar with the Sandhills area of West Texas and the writings of Elmer Kelton, this book is a real treat. Most of his writings are Western historical fiction that are first class. But this book is the story of his life as the son of a Ranch Manager at the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert. We lived there for many years with our youngest son going to school there his last several years. Our other children visited there frequently and we roamed all of that country. Of the many places in Texas that we lived this is the most memorable area with a rich history of prehistoric Indians, the dry years and the less dry years. There were very few years that could be considered wet, although once we saw the Pecos River running over the bridge down near McCamey.

This book is an easy read and covers Elmers time in WWII, of his wife and children and of a good man gounded in real life. What a pleasure it was to read this fine book and to travel down memory lane. We lived on McElroy Street in Crane that was named for the McElroy Ranch that played a large part in this homespun book.

A wonderful treat for a homesick soul who now lives in Florida. Billie Freeman

I've read most, if not all, of Elmer Kelton's books, The Good Old Boys and Cloudy in the West among my favorites, so I was eager to read this story of his life, so far.

I especially enjoyed his growing up years in Texas. However the rest, his stint in the army, meeting the love of his life in Austria, and his life after the war was interesting. It's a quiet story, all without fanfare and glamour, must I suspect like the man himself.

He mentions steeples (used to fix fence). I'd always called them staples. It may be a regional or generational term.

Anyway, it's a good book. Eunice Boeve author of Ride a Shadowed Trail

It was an interesting and unusual journey, particularly for fans of his fiction. If your not a fan, don't be put of by the genre. He is a great story teller, and his characters have as much depth as you will find in great literature.

This was a very entertaining book about the life of autor Elmer Kelton. I enjoyed all the stories about his parents and brothers as well as neighbors and friend he had known over the years. I highly recommend this book to all Elmer Kelton fans.