The Rawhide Knot and Other Stories

by Conrad Richter

Eight stories by the Pulitzer Prize-winner share similar settings and characters--pioneer days and the pioneers who lived them--and are bound by the unifying theme of marriage

Genres: Short Stories, Historical Fiction

205 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Conrad Michael Richter (October 13, 1890 – October 30, 1968) was an American novelist whose lyrical work is concerned largely with life on the American frontier in various periods. His novel The Town (1950), the last story of his trilogy The Awakening Land about the Ohio frontier, won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[1] His novel The Waters of Kronos won the 1961 National Book Award for Fiction.[2] Two collections of short stories were published posthumously during the 20th century, and several of his novels have been reissued during the 21st century by academic presses. (wikipedia.org)

Reviews

[Delilah Brinkerhoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book

This is a great book. It should be read to our children and grand children. It would really inlighten our young of the hardships and bravery of our pioneers. And teach them the very backbone of our nation - freedom.

[Jim Jaqcobs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Captures the heart, mind, and the soul.

JIm

[Jay Dewey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first time ever reading Conrad Richter. Somewhere long ago I bought a copy of his short stories and only last week found it -- and what a find it was. He writes about the old west during the era behind pioneering and second generation. Some of it is the old wild, wild, west but most of it has to do with the hard, hard life of those who took a risk, went west in search of a better life. Yes the Indians are the bad guys, and yes the whites kill the Indians and no moral comment is made on this, but that also is a symptom of the thinking of the time. Throughout his book, there is a common humanity even in his writing of characters that I would not now want to meet today. They don't fit modern America, we have our own strugglers, our own out of place, our own lonely, and our own power structures, and power struggles. His portrayal is not so much about the struggles as it is how to see the basic 'good' beneath the exterior look, exterior conditions, and even the exterior acts.
The writing is excellent. Well worth the read.

[Gregory Strong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conrad Richter writes with a vivid and eloquent economy about courage, fear, loss, and hope in times of exploration, encounter with other peoples, social and technological development, and transition across generations. These short stories spanning the late 1700s and first half of the 1800s are set in the American southwest and what was once the frontier in Pennsylvania and Ohio. His storytelling in this collection points to his masterful trilogy of the transition from frontier to town for a family leaving central Pennsylvania and going to what would become Ohio (think of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787): The Trees; The Fields; The Town. When collected in one volume they constitute "The Awakening Land." If you have any interest, I recommend this collection of short stories, his trilogy, and his novel of the southwest, "The Sea of Grass."

[Bonnye Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

XXX Excellent short stories by the author of Sea of Grass. Conrad Richter is another voice, like Zane Gray, Wallace Stegner, Ivan Doig and Louis LAmore, that brings the old west alive. The majority of these stories concern weddings, nothing like marriage as we know it today. The first story will find you a little shocked at those differences, but by the end you are not sure which type of wedding is the shock-filled one. If you have not read Conrad Richter, or it has been years since you have, give him a go. Sea of Grass is - I am wordless. It will not be so long before I re-read this author.