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The Blind Corral
1987 trade paperback, 9780140102659. Ralph Beer.(Afternoon Light;In these Hills).An emotionally damaged veteran returns to his family ranch in a rapidly changing Montana. Captures the atmosphere and dignity of a way of life that is slowly dying-Book Blurb
240 pages, Paperback
First published June 9, 1986
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May 5, 2019
Three generations of the Heckethorne family, with the youngest trying to make up for a promise unkept. His dreams of success on the rodeo circuit are interrupted when he is called home to help with the family cattle operation in Montana.
Smell the new mown hay, harken to the cadence of the horses and the men as they work the cattle, neighbors helping neighbors, same as family. Fighting the forces of winter, only to have to do it all over again the next year. The neverending mending of fences, the availability of water and grazing pasture for the livestock. Cattle auctions, discussions of pocketknives and pickup trucks, and trying to keep land grabbers at bay when they seem to hold all the cards.
This is my kind of book. It was not available from our library, but a copy was found through the Mobius program from the Jefferson College Library in Hillsboro, Missouri.
Smell the new mown hay, harken to the cadence of the horses and the men as they work the cattle, neighbors helping neighbors, same as family. Fighting the forces of winter, only to have to do it all over again the next year. The neverending mending of fences, the availability of water and grazing pasture for the livestock. Cattle auctions, discussions of pocketknives and pickup trucks, and trying to keep land grabbers at bay when they seem to hold all the cards.
This is my kind of book. It was not available from our library, but a copy was found through the Mobius program from the Jefferson College Library in Hillsboro, Missouri.
November 7, 2019
UPDATE:
I reviewed this book back in 2014, which was shortly after joining Goodreads. I have brought it back because I have added Ralph Beer to my shelf of "forgotten writers who deserve to be remembered" and I wanted the review to explain why I had added him.
Any readers who are turned off by the fact that the book was named "Best Western novel" shouldn't be. This is a literary western, as opposed to a genre western, meaning that it is a universal story that happens to be set in the American West.
“The Blind Corral” was Ralph Beer's first novel. The book was so well received that the Western Writers of America bestowed its coveted Spur Award on Beer for Best Western novel. That was twenty-six years ago. He has not written a second novel.
That doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been writing during the interim. He has had many essays published over the years, primarily in Harper’s and other magazines, and in a couple of anthologies. Thirty-three of his essays were collected and published in 2006 under the title, “In These Hills.” But there has been no second novel. And that is a shame, for Beer is a talented writer, and “The Blind Corral” is an excellent contemporary Western.
In this semi-autobiographical novel, Jackson Heckethorn, a wounded Vietnam veteran who has just been released from an Army psychiatric hospital, returns to his Montana ranch home. He represents the fourth generation of his family to live on that ranch, but he has plans to move on.
The family ranch is located near Helena and that presents one of the biggest obstacles facing him and the other ranchers in the area. Not only do they have to contend with the unpredictable weather and all the other uncertainties associated with ranching, but they must also attempt to stave off the encroachment of urbanization and commercial and residential development. In the historic past there had been range wars between cattlemen and homesteaders and between cattlemen and sheepmen. It seems that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
As Nancy Mairs wrote in her 1986 review of the novel in the LA Times, “[t]he struggle of urban developers against an established and respectable form of rural living is a contemporary Western version of a range war. Though the developers’ violence and injustice are less pronounced than typical they still arouse Jackson’s anger, helping him to realize his love for the land and for his family’s way of life.”
I don’t want to give away any more of the plot of this richly textured novel. Besides, any feeble attempt by me to summarize it would pale against what Beer has written. The advice to novice writers from time immemorial is to write about what one knows. And that is what he has done. He has lived the life he describes in this authentic depiction of an individual’s emotional attachment to the land.
But the price for that attachment is not always an easy one to pay. Jackson’s neighbor, Ted Schillings, hits the nail squarely on the head when he describes the life of a Montana rancher:
“It never quits….Every year a fella figures he’ll do better, have better luck, get a better price come fall. But it’s always the same, or nearly always. You work hard at it when you’re young, build up your place, breed up your stock, work your fields. Then the price of beef goes down. One day you look outside and it’s winter again, the whole thing to go through over, and you just don’t care. You come to the point where you can see you aren’t gaining an inch, that the fence posts you put in a few years back have rotted off, the barn’s leaning, the kids growing up or gone.”
And there you have it in a nutshell, but what do you want to bet that Ted won’t still be there next year – going through the whole thing again?
I reviewed this book back in 2014, which was shortly after joining Goodreads. I have brought it back because I have added Ralph Beer to my shelf of "forgotten writers who deserve to be remembered" and I wanted the review to explain why I had added him.
Any readers who are turned off by the fact that the book was named "Best Western novel" shouldn't be. This is a literary western, as opposed to a genre western, meaning that it is a universal story that happens to be set in the American West.
“The Blind Corral” was Ralph Beer's first novel. The book was so well received that the Western Writers of America bestowed its coveted Spur Award on Beer for Best Western novel. That was twenty-six years ago. He has not written a second novel.
That doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been writing during the interim. He has had many essays published over the years, primarily in Harper’s and other magazines, and in a couple of anthologies. Thirty-three of his essays were collected and published in 2006 under the title, “In These Hills.” But there has been no second novel. And that is a shame, for Beer is a talented writer, and “The Blind Corral” is an excellent contemporary Western.
In this semi-autobiographical novel, Jackson Heckethorn, a wounded Vietnam veteran who has just been released from an Army psychiatric hospital, returns to his Montana ranch home. He represents the fourth generation of his family to live on that ranch, but he has plans to move on.
The family ranch is located near Helena and that presents one of the biggest obstacles facing him and the other ranchers in the area. Not only do they have to contend with the unpredictable weather and all the other uncertainties associated with ranching, but they must also attempt to stave off the encroachment of urbanization and commercial and residential development. In the historic past there had been range wars between cattlemen and homesteaders and between cattlemen and sheepmen. It seems that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
As Nancy Mairs wrote in her 1986 review of the novel in the LA Times, “[t]he struggle of urban developers against an established and respectable form of rural living is a contemporary Western version of a range war. Though the developers’ violence and injustice are less pronounced than typical they still arouse Jackson’s anger, helping him to realize his love for the land and for his family’s way of life.”
I don’t want to give away any more of the plot of this richly textured novel. Besides, any feeble attempt by me to summarize it would pale against what Beer has written. The advice to novice writers from time immemorial is to write about what one knows. And that is what he has done. He has lived the life he describes in this authentic depiction of an individual’s emotional attachment to the land.
But the price for that attachment is not always an easy one to pay. Jackson’s neighbor, Ted Schillings, hits the nail squarely on the head when he describes the life of a Montana rancher:
“It never quits….Every year a fella figures he’ll do better, have better luck, get a better price come fall. But it’s always the same, or nearly always. You work hard at it when you’re young, build up your place, breed up your stock, work your fields. Then the price of beef goes down. One day you look outside and it’s winter again, the whole thing to go through over, and you just don’t care. You come to the point where you can see you aren’t gaining an inch, that the fence posts you put in a few years back have rotted off, the barn’s leaning, the kids growing up or gone.”
And there you have it in a nutshell, but what do you want to bet that Ted won’t still be there next year – going through the whole thing again?
August 10, 2019
At first I wasn't sure about this one. Yes, it was recommended by Howard, who hasn't yet steered me wrong. And yes, other friends who listen to Howard had read the book and loved it. And yes, there was even a jacket blurb full of accolades from Harry Crews, and a quote by Wendell Berry at the front of the book. But still, the Montana setting, the cattlemen, horses, isolated ranchers who never fit in anywhere, the fighting, the drinking; none of this felt familiar or relatable to me. This wasn't my world...until all of a sudden it was.
Jackson goes home for a few weeks to recover after a stateside injury keeps him from going to VietNam. All he wants is to see his father and grandfather before leaving for Canada, where a girlfriend and the rodeo circuit await. Best laid plans and all that. The world he had left a few years ago is disappearing beneath the developers plans for housing and progress, his family needs him, and surprisingly, he finds that he needs the land and what it stands for. This novel was a moving exploration of a young man dealing with mistakes from his past and an unsure future, who has to decide what is important in the long run. I'll be thinking about it for a while, and trying to figure out what it meant that he never named the horse. I really did love that horse.
Jackson goes home for a few weeks to recover after a stateside injury keeps him from going to VietNam. All he wants is to see his father and grandfather before leaving for Canada, where a girlfriend and the rodeo circuit await. Best laid plans and all that. The world he had left a few years ago is disappearing beneath the developers plans for housing and progress, his family needs him, and surprisingly, he finds that he needs the land and what it stands for. This novel was a moving exploration of a young man dealing with mistakes from his past and an unsure future, who has to decide what is important in the long run. I'll be thinking about it for a while, and trying to figure out what it meant that he never named the horse. I really did love that horse.
January 12, 2022
The Blind Corral ended up being a good bit more complex than I thought it would be. Early on the novel sets up a stark contrast between the Old West and the New West, that is, between established ranchers who have worked the land for generations and new entrepreneurs who are buying up land for subdivisions, commercial development, and the like. It’s pretty clear, at least at first, that the former are the good guys and the latter are the bad guys. It’s a classic set up, found in many Westerns, old and new.
The central character is Jackson—or Jack—Heckethorn, a young man returning to his family’s Montana ranch after a stint in the service in which he was seriously injured by an explosion during a training exercise (he remains haunted by the experience). Jack plans to stay only a few weeks, helping out on the ranch and recuperating before hightailing it to Canada to be with his girlfriend. Things don’t work out as planned, as the ranch has many immediate needs, not only with rounding up cattle but also with countering growing threats from the real estate moguls and their lawyers (and henchmen). Jack keeps putting off his departure, eventually settling in for the long haul, though it's not entirely clear if there will be a long haul.
There’s lots to admire in Jack’s decision to stay and the novel foregrounds his loyalty and his commitment to his family and the ranch. But there’s a dark underside to his decision, one that complicates the opposition between the Old West and New West. As the novel develops, it becomes clear that the contrast is not all that clear cut, that ugly secrets lurk in the family history which suggest that the those of the Old West might not be all that different from those of the New. So while it initially seems admirable that Jack commits to the ranch, there’s a troubling side to that commitment, one suggested in the image of the title: the blind corral. As described by someone who knows a lot more about ranching than I do, a blind corral is “a hidden, funnel-shaped trap through which unsuspecting cattle are driven, ultimately to a holding pen, and thence to the slaughterhouse.” Jack may not be going to the slaughterhouse, but one could argue that in being led back into the family he is heading unsuspectingly into a trap of which he may not ever be able to get out.
And, indeed, eventually Jack comes to see that all the ranchers around him are in a sense trapped, though it’s not entirely clear if he includes himself in that group. Late in the novel he runs through all the ranchers he knows and the problems they’re facing, ending with this bleak observation: “What had trapped them was so simple, so clear. Change. Change accelerating beyond their wildest dreams, until each trip they took to town showed them new evidence of their hopeless way of life. New basements, new power lines and survey crews on land that hadn’t changed in recent geological time.” Jack goes on to ponder if such change is happening all over the West and, if it is, where that leaves him. While Jack never explicitly answers his question, the reader probably could: nowhere.
The insecurity and ambiguity of Jack’s position give The Blind Corral its weight and significance, with Beer deftly manipulating many of the standard plot devices and tropes of the Western. I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece but it’s certainly rich and compelling.
The central character is Jackson—or Jack—Heckethorn, a young man returning to his family’s Montana ranch after a stint in the service in which he was seriously injured by an explosion during a training exercise (he remains haunted by the experience). Jack plans to stay only a few weeks, helping out on the ranch and recuperating before hightailing it to Canada to be with his girlfriend. Things don’t work out as planned, as the ranch has many immediate needs, not only with rounding up cattle but also with countering growing threats from the real estate moguls and their lawyers (and henchmen). Jack keeps putting off his departure, eventually settling in for the long haul, though it's not entirely clear if there will be a long haul.
There’s lots to admire in Jack’s decision to stay and the novel foregrounds his loyalty and his commitment to his family and the ranch. But there’s a dark underside to his decision, one that complicates the opposition between the Old West and New West. As the novel develops, it becomes clear that the contrast is not all that clear cut, that ugly secrets lurk in the family history which suggest that the those of the Old West might not be all that different from those of the New. So while it initially seems admirable that Jack commits to the ranch, there’s a troubling side to that commitment, one suggested in the image of the title: the blind corral. As described by someone who knows a lot more about ranching than I do, a blind corral is “a hidden, funnel-shaped trap through which unsuspecting cattle are driven, ultimately to a holding pen, and thence to the slaughterhouse.” Jack may not be going to the slaughterhouse, but one could argue that in being led back into the family he is heading unsuspectingly into a trap of which he may not ever be able to get out.
And, indeed, eventually Jack comes to see that all the ranchers around him are in a sense trapped, though it’s not entirely clear if he includes himself in that group. Late in the novel he runs through all the ranchers he knows and the problems they’re facing, ending with this bleak observation: “What had trapped them was so simple, so clear. Change. Change accelerating beyond their wildest dreams, until each trip they took to town showed them new evidence of their hopeless way of life. New basements, new power lines and survey crews on land that hadn’t changed in recent geological time.” Jack goes on to ponder if such change is happening all over the West and, if it is, where that leaves him. While Jack never explicitly answers his question, the reader probably could: nowhere.
The insecurity and ambiguity of Jack’s position give The Blind Corral its weight and significance, with Beer deftly manipulating many of the standard plot devices and tropes of the Western. I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece but it’s certainly rich and compelling.
June 25, 2019
You have every confidence this book has a great deal of potential when the author has a quote by Wendell Berry on the first page. Like Berry, Beer knows his place and people. I feel fortunate as a reader to have the privileged to be invited to know his people and place. I think GR friend Howard uses the term “literary western” to describe this book. This one gathers momentum, one minute you want more and the next my weak heart can’t take anymore strain. Beer bares all. Thank you Howard for introducing me to this author and this book. 5 perfect stars.
November 22, 2019
Just, wow.
A pure gem, surprising in its depth and maturity. This novel stands on its own from every angle: as a quietly entertaining tale, as a thoughtful Bildungsroman, as a literary portrait true to the voice of its setting and time, and as a genuine snapshot of a disappearing place in the American West.
Novels that feature generational agriculture are a vast treasure of perspective that becomes increasingly more relevant in the context of the current furor over meat production, ag practices and the food industry. Not the "farm to table" movement, but the values and character of people who brought agriculture in North America to its current state of abundance. The battles are still the same: a very demanding way of life, combined with isolation, a never-ceasing choke hold on cost of production, fickle markets and encroachment by development and recreational interests. Ralph Beer manages to address all of those things in a nearly imperceptible undercurrent of Jackson Heckethorn's days and thoughts. When young people grow up knowing these pressures, from before even learning to read, it builds a pretty fascinating character set of "us against the world".
If identity is work and work is surviving and surviving is love and love is work . . .
These people inhabit a very large personal space.
A pure gem, surprising in its depth and maturity. This novel stands on its own from every angle: as a quietly entertaining tale, as a thoughtful Bildungsroman, as a literary portrait true to the voice of its setting and time, and as a genuine snapshot of a disappearing place in the American West.
Novels that feature generational agriculture are a vast treasure of perspective that becomes increasingly more relevant in the context of the current furor over meat production, ag practices and the food industry. Not the "farm to table" movement, but the values and character of people who brought agriculture in North America to its current state of abundance. The battles are still the same: a very demanding way of life, combined with isolation, a never-ceasing choke hold on cost of production, fickle markets and encroachment by development and recreational interests. Ralph Beer manages to address all of those things in a nearly imperceptible undercurrent of Jackson Heckethorn's days and thoughts. When young people grow up knowing these pressures, from before even learning to read, it builds a pretty fascinating character set of "us against the world".
If identity is work and work is surviving and surviving is love and love is work . . .
These people inhabit a very large personal space.
"The Blind Corral" seemed like a good metaphor to me in this respect, that you sometimes finally find yourself getting narrowed down and narrowed down and narrowed down until you're trapped. That's what happens to Jack. The book is about his desire, and other people's desire, to leave: going and finding some other better place. It's on Jack's mind, all the time, this business of leaving. But during the months he lingers, he rediscovers not only that he loves the place but in that discovery, he begins to rediscover himself. That is what matters most."
-Ralph Beer in Talking Up a Storm: Voices of the New West
April 19, 2012
I had no expectations when I picked up this novel, except that I'd read a nonfiction piece by the author, a Montana writer, enjoyed his point of view, and marveled at his gift of language. As a novelist, he offers up a story and characters that are vivid and real, and the language that describes their world is close to poetry. There's a wonderful precision in the detail and the word choice that makes you just slow down and relish each sentence as it evokes the experience of being alive under this big sky through the roll of the seasons.
The story is told through the perspective of a young man returning home to his father and grandfather, outside Helena, Montana. He's had some hard luck, an accident on a firing range that has put him in a military hospital, and before that a rodeo career that has gone nowhere. The stopover is meant to be temporary, but like wild horses drawn unwittingly into the blind corral of the title, he is unable to leave, spending a bitter winter with his dying grandfather, an aging rancher, instead of returning to Canada as planned and a woman he has taken up with.
There is an aching melancholy throughout the novel that fills the scenes with a sense of loss. The ranchland, which no longer supports the cattle business, is being bought up by developers. The generation that grew up there and made a living from it, through good years and bad, is now passing on. They have little to leave their descendants but the land itself, worth little more than what it can be sold for. And there is irony in how losing the land mirrors the same loss by the Indians who preceded them a century earlier.
But it's also a personal story, of the young hero's return from adventures that have left him empty and without direction. His fate is played out in a man's world where women, if they figure at all, are as tough and independent as the men. The toughness is both a strength that protects them and a tragic flaw that leads them into lives of emotional isolation. When an old man dies, the best that can be said of him is that "he was hard on horses; he never forgot a grudge; he either liked you or he didn't."
On the downbeat side, yes, but there is also a quiet beauty in this novel. The land, though scarred and abused, still consoles the soul. And the reader is left on the cusp of both sorrow and admiration for these characters who can tough it out, each a surviving fragment of the old West, clinging to a kind of dignity in a new West that is tawdry and shallow by comparison.
The story is told through the perspective of a young man returning home to his father and grandfather, outside Helena, Montana. He's had some hard luck, an accident on a firing range that has put him in a military hospital, and before that a rodeo career that has gone nowhere. The stopover is meant to be temporary, but like wild horses drawn unwittingly into the blind corral of the title, he is unable to leave, spending a bitter winter with his dying grandfather, an aging rancher, instead of returning to Canada as planned and a woman he has taken up with.
There is an aching melancholy throughout the novel that fills the scenes with a sense of loss. The ranchland, which no longer supports the cattle business, is being bought up by developers. The generation that grew up there and made a living from it, through good years and bad, is now passing on. They have little to leave their descendants but the land itself, worth little more than what it can be sold for. And there is irony in how losing the land mirrors the same loss by the Indians who preceded them a century earlier.
But it's also a personal story, of the young hero's return from adventures that have left him empty and without direction. His fate is played out in a man's world where women, if they figure at all, are as tough and independent as the men. The toughness is both a strength that protects them and a tragic flaw that leads them into lives of emotional isolation. When an old man dies, the best that can be said of him is that "he was hard on horses; he never forgot a grudge; he either liked you or he didn't."
On the downbeat side, yes, but there is also a quiet beauty in this novel. The land, though scarred and abused, still consoles the soul. And the reader is left on the cusp of both sorrow and admiration for these characters who can tough it out, each a surviving fragment of the old West, clinging to a kind of dignity in a new West that is tawdry and shallow by comparison.
October 20, 2011
Ralph Beer's command of the written word ranks right up there with the best. Unfortunately this book is now out of print, but search of used book stores online might capture a copy. The effort will be well worth it. Beer's writing tends to be a little dark, and this book is no exception, but as an example of fine literary writing in the mode of James Welch, James Crumbly, and similar contemporaries, it fits well.
March 1, 2014
Unbelievable. On so many levels, this is without doubt one of the finest books I've ever read, possibly my favorite book ever. I read it as slowly as I could because I couldn't stand for it to end, but when it did I found myself more profoundly moved than I could have possibly anticipated. I wish there were more Ralph Beer novels to read. What a writer.
February 25, 2022
I haven't read a work of Western Americana in quite some time. I was lucky enough to grab this contemporary novel (more than a "Western") off the shelf at random.
Set in ranch country just outside Helena, MT, third generation ranch owners the Heckethorns face a problem from the mid '80's that still exists today. The growth of mid-sized cities, outsiders purchasing local land for profit, the unprofitablity of ranch life.
Beer is a rancher himself (or was, it appears from a blurb he may have sold off his family's land finally) who went on to the Creative Writing Department at the U of MT. I am not sure if he was an instructor, or a friend/fellow writer, but it is fun to have an unseen character pop up in the novel, Kittridge!
The detail of daily rancher life, and all the tools and such involved, lets you know this is the "real thing" from a writer who knows what he is talking about. The land, the geography, the weather - he gets it right!
There are a couple scenes I could have done without- particularly the long drunk in Section III. I wonder who the crazy writer he meets is based upon. Richard Ford? The 2 short people companions are a bit much too.
Unfortunately Beer has not written another novel since (1986), let alone a follow up to this short family saga. He has published 3 other books - a couple collections of nonfiction (one as recently as 2016 - and I have not seen an obit online, so I am figuring he is still alive) and a memoir of his early life (much of those details used here).
More than just a "Western", and an excellent piece of Western Americana writing, it tells a story that will appeal to readers beyond those sub-genres.
Set in ranch country just outside Helena, MT, third generation ranch owners the Heckethorns face a problem from the mid '80's that still exists today. The growth of mid-sized cities, outsiders purchasing local land for profit, the unprofitablity of ranch life.
Beer is a rancher himself (or was, it appears from a blurb he may have sold off his family's land finally) who went on to the Creative Writing Department at the U of MT. I am not sure if he was an instructor, or a friend/fellow writer, but it is fun to have an unseen character pop up in the novel, Kittridge!
The detail of daily rancher life, and all the tools and such involved, lets you know this is the "real thing" from a writer who knows what he is talking about. The land, the geography, the weather - he gets it right!
There are a couple scenes I could have done without- particularly the long drunk in Section III. I wonder who the crazy writer he meets is based upon. Richard Ford? The 2 short people companions are a bit much too.
Unfortunately Beer has not written another novel since (1986), let alone a follow up to this short family saga. He has published 3 other books - a couple collections of nonfiction (one as recently as 2016 - and I have not seen an obit online, so I am figuring he is still alive) and a memoir of his early life (much of those details used here).
More than just a "Western", and an excellent piece of Western Americana writing, it tells a story that will appeal to readers beyond those sub-genres.
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