Lost Stage Valley

by Frank Bonham

Vintage paperback

Genres: Westerns

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Frank Bonham (February 25, 1914 – 1988) was an author of Westerns and young adult novels. Bonham wrote 48 novels, as well as TV scripts. Bonham was born in Los Angeles. He was a UCLA graduate. Bonham was known for his works for young adults written in the 1960s, with tough, realistic urban settings, including The Nitty Gritty and Durango Street, as well as for his westerns. Several of his works have been published posthumously, many of which were drawn from his pulp magazine stories, originally published between 1941 and 1952. Durango Street was an ALA Notable Book.

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lost Stage Valley (1948) This is a near fine paperback edition of Frank Bonham’s first (I think) novel. This is the first paperback edition, published in 1949, of the book, which is copyrighted 1948, originally published in hardcover by Simon and Shuster. “Gertrude the Kangaroo” is hopping all over the book’s inside front and back cardboard cover. The cover is dramatic, with a close-up of the dilated eyeball of a man looking down the sights of a six shooter. The blurb on his cheek says “Grif saw his shot rip into the outlaw’s head.” I looked for the line within the text and didn’t see it. This book has much to admire it. Grif Holbrook is a forty nine year old trouble shooter who signs on to help the Butterfield stage company in 1859, right on the cusp of the Civil War. He is sent to Arizona, where stage coaches are being stolen and drivers killed. The realistic Arizona setting reminds me a bit of Elmore Leonard, but the focus on the fight between the pro-secessionist Territorials and the pro-Union Regulars reads a lot like Kelton’s tales of pre-Civil War Texas. The fact that Holbrook is 49 is particularly relevant as he falls fo a twenty three stage company employee named Kate. The fear on the cover is reflected in the novel, but Holbrook’s real fear is about getting old. He ends up falling for a 35 year old madam whom he once refers to as an old bat or old bag or something. Clearly, women fourteen years his junior are too old for him. He settles for her of course, and there is a grand battle at the end where the bad guy, whose identity, while fairly obvious, is officially hidden from the reader until the last few chapters. Bonham obviously strives for realism and even his villains are drawn in sympathetic strokes. And his hero is deeply flawed. Bonham, like pulp mystery novelist William Campbell Gault, made his name writing YA type novels for boys, but a good writer is a good writer and it’s a joy to discover one