Collected Essays and Short Stories

by H.L. Davis

366 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1985

About the author

Harold Lenoir Davis (October 18, 1894–October 31, 1960), known as H. L. Davis, was an American novelist and poet. A native of Oregon, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Honey in the Horn, the only Pulitzer given to a native Oregonian. Later living in California and Texas, he also wrote short stories for magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post.

Reviews

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good collection of essays and short stories by a relatively unknown but, actually, excellent writer who was a Pulitzer winner. I have an interest in his work primarily because he writes mostly about Oregon and that's where I spent the first thirty years of my life and so have a nostalgic feeling for it. The favorite essays for me were one titled Oregon and another titled Puget Sound Country which were about his travels through these regions in the early 1950's. I would have been about six or seven at that time but it still brought back lots of memories. Another essay I enjoyed was titled Sheep Herding that included some rather far-fetched stories about dogs but was still very good. The second half of the book were short stories of which my favorite was probably Old Man Isbell's Wife about a twenty-eight year old woman marrying an eighty-five year old man. This story started with a beautiful opening section about the establishment of a small town in Eastern Oregon. Davis writing has a fairly lyrical quality but also a roughness to it that reflects his growing up in hard times of the early 1900's.