Tuesday 18 July 2017

AUTHOR FAVOURITES: CADE’S REVENGE by ROBERT VAUGHAN



In plunging into the world of Social Media I’ve been lucky enough to contact some of the best, most distinguished and successful western authors. Few are more distinguished and successful than Robert Vaughan.
Robert’s books have hit the New York Times bestseller list seven times. He’s won the Spur Award, the PORGIE Award (Best Paperback Original), the Western Fictioneers Lifetime Achievement Award, received the Readwest President's Award for Excellence in Western Fiction, is a member of the American Writers Hall of Fame and is a Pulitzer Prize nominee. And he doesn’t just write westerns!
He tells me he has a first and second favourite of all his books. I’ve already posted about number 2 - YESTERDAY'S REVEILLE.


Robert says his favourite of all his books is the 2nd in his CADE McCALL series, CADE’S REVENGE.

We follow Cade as he rides the Chisholm Trail, crosses raging rivers, faces cattle rustlers and fights marauding Indians while taking a herd of longhorns north to Kansas.


Cattle drives were a major economic activity in the 19th-century American West, particularly between 1866 and 1886, when 20 million cattle were herded from Texas to railheads in Kansas, for shipments to stockyards in Chicago and points east.



1879 Cowboys

These cattle were at least initially scrawny, fractious, semi-wild stock known as ‘Longhorns.’


These railhead towns became known as 'cow towns' and were famous for being ‘wild and woolly.’ Cowboys, fresh from several months ‘eating dust’ driving cattle across the plains, let off steam in the saloons, gambling houses and bordellos of these raw new settlements. First of these was Abeline, at the end of the Chisolm Train.


Abeline stockyards

Others followed, sometimes only blooming for a single season as the railways pushed further west – places like Newton, Ellsworth, Wichita, Caldwell and Baxter Springs.

By 1877, the largest of the cattle-shipping boom towns, Dodge City, shipped out 500,000 head of cattle.


Dodge City 1874

However, through the 1870s and 1880s, railroads expanded to cover most of the west, and meat packing plants were built closer to major ranching areas, making long cattle drives to the railheads unnecessary.

Thinking of trail drives, which have featured in innumerable westerns, naturally I thought of the daddy of all trail drive movies: RED RIVER (1948.)


A trail drive from Texas to Montana is the backdrop to Larry McMurtry’s LONESOME DOVE, a book made into an acclaimed TV mini-series.



Tommy Lee Jones & Robert Duvall in LONESOME DOVE


A trail drive depicted in LONESOME DOVE

And the TV series RAWHIDE had its cowboy heroes (including a young CLINT EASTWOOD) on a 6-year trail drive, as the show ran from 1959 to 1965!


OWEN WISTER, writer of the early western classic ‘THE VIRGINIAN’ (1902) (also made into a TV series) features in CADE’S REVENGE.


Owen Wister


James Drury in TV's 'THE VIRGINIAN'

90% of the reviews for CADE’S REVENGE are 5 star!
‘Intriguing… stays on key from beginning to end.’
'A book that's hard to put down.'
'A fun reading novel of the Old West. The author's development of the character is great.'
https://www.amazon.com/Cades-Revenge-Western-Adventures-McCall-ebook/dp/B01MQGG4HJ/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

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