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Destiny Range
When a neighboring rancher sets his sights on the Pinon's finest horses, ranch foreman Dexter Sublette is caught in the middle and must protect his boss, a former Russian princess, at all costs. Original.
- GenresWesterns
239 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1932
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 9, 2020
3.5 Stars
During Covid, I have more time to take walks, and I’m on a kick of reading western paperbacks on my journey. This is typically taking me a few weeks to a month, but this one took a long time because it’s very hot where I live and I couldn’t go walking during the summer. Anyhow...
Destiny Range is yet another Western by L.P. Holmes—a man undoubtedly one of my favorite western authors of all-time. No, he’s not Louis L’Amour, and, like L’Amour, he wrote during a time when explicit violence, language and sex were nearly unheard of in Westerns (though L’Amour did have his moments). Thus, his stories focus on the themes of loyalty, faith in men, the bonds of brotherhood, the importance of women to a family and society, of the rewards of hard work, clean living, faithfulness and fidelity to all (in other words, behavior completely foreign to at least half of all Americans). Yes, Holmes’ stories are all very similar—the good guy, his faithful friends, the damsel in distress, the bad guy and his cronies—and the endings are usually as one would expect from a classic western, but Holmes just had the ability to insert a unique quality into each story, and that’s why I keep returning to him, and have read at least four of his novels so far this year, with one or two more to come. I absolutely love Holmes’ writing style. Few Western authors have such a gift of diction. He brings the fight scenes to life, but what I most love about many of his passages are the almost serene quality of the way he describes the landscape, from the deep canyons that almost invite death, to the spring, the rivers that bring new life. He makes me appreciate the gift of the written word, and at times, makes my heart sing. If I weren’t lazy tonight, I’d provide some passages, but I’d have to manually type them from the book, and...well...you’ll just have to trust me.
America is circling the drain. The righteous suffer while the wicked prosper. The good guy doesn’t win anymore. No justice exists for evil men who subjugate others for their own benefit, and who seek to destroy those they don’t like, just because they can. The America our Founding Fathers envisioned and then created is on the verge of extinction, and like most things that go extinct, it will never return (with the exception of Jurassic Park that is). Seriously, though, Westerns take us back to a time when life was tenuous and hard, in so many ways, but it was also a time when the wicked got what they deserved, when hard work was rewarded, and good, clean righteous living brought admiration and respect. I read these novels, just as I watch MASH, to remind me that good people once existed. They provide, for me, an escape from a world I almost dread waking up to each day. They don’t remind me of better days to come, true, but they do remind me of what we’ve lost and will never get back, and in some way, that experience is worth the journey for me.
During Covid, I have more time to take walks, and I’m on a kick of reading western paperbacks on my journey. This is typically taking me a few weeks to a month, but this one took a long time because it’s very hot where I live and I couldn’t go walking during the summer. Anyhow...
Destiny Range is yet another Western by L.P. Holmes—a man undoubtedly one of my favorite western authors of all-time. No, he’s not Louis L’Amour, and, like L’Amour, he wrote during a time when explicit violence, language and sex were nearly unheard of in Westerns (though L’Amour did have his moments). Thus, his stories focus on the themes of loyalty, faith in men, the bonds of brotherhood, the importance of women to a family and society, of the rewards of hard work, clean living, faithfulness and fidelity to all (in other words, behavior completely foreign to at least half of all Americans). Yes, Holmes’ stories are all very similar—the good guy, his faithful friends, the damsel in distress, the bad guy and his cronies—and the endings are usually as one would expect from a classic western, but Holmes just had the ability to insert a unique quality into each story, and that’s why I keep returning to him, and have read at least four of his novels so far this year, with one or two more to come. I absolutely love Holmes’ writing style. Few Western authors have such a gift of diction. He brings the fight scenes to life, but what I most love about many of his passages are the almost serene quality of the way he describes the landscape, from the deep canyons that almost invite death, to the spring, the rivers that bring new life. He makes me appreciate the gift of the written word, and at times, makes my heart sing. If I weren’t lazy tonight, I’d provide some passages, but I’d have to manually type them from the book, and...well...you’ll just have to trust me.
America is circling the drain. The righteous suffer while the wicked prosper. The good guy doesn’t win anymore. No justice exists for evil men who subjugate others for their own benefit, and who seek to destroy those they don’t like, just because they can. The America our Founding Fathers envisioned and then created is on the verge of extinction, and like most things that go extinct, it will never return (with the exception of Jurassic Park that is). Seriously, though, Westerns take us back to a time when life was tenuous and hard, in so many ways, but it was also a time when the wicked got what they deserved, when hard work was rewarded, and good, clean righteous living brought admiration and respect. I read these novels, just as I watch MASH, to remind me that good people once existed. They provide, for me, an escape from a world I almost dread waking up to each day. They don’t remind me of better days to come, true, but they do remind me of what we’ve lost and will never get back, and in some way, that experience is worth the journey for me.
Displaying 1 of 1 review