Abstract
Richard E. Lingenfelter. Death Valley and the Amargosa: A Land of Illusion. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1986. viii + 664 pp. Illus. Carol Fairbanks, Prairie Women: Images in American and Canadian Fiction. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. xi + 300 pp. Illus. Will Baker. Mountain Blood. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986. xi + 175 pp. Illus. Richard Batman. James Pattie's West: The Dream and the Reality. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. xii + 378 pp. Illus. Joseph C. Porter. Paper Medicine Man: John Gregory Bourke and his American West. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. xviii + 362 pp. Illus. In the last tale of Will Baker's Mountain Blood, the narrator crawls through a tunnel deep into a mountain, pursuing a thin vein of gold. His guide is a Mexican miner who is reworking an old site abandoned long ago by the Spanish. Within the story, the incident clearly functions as a metaphor for the writer's attempt to rework the subject of the West from a new perspective, and so expose hidden nuggets of meaning. Not all the authors under discussion use this metaphor, but it applies to all their endeavours. Often by means of prodigious research, these five works mine different regions for stories, images or characters which were previously unknown or misunderstood. In the process, they all tap a familiar vein: the amalgamation of reality and illusion in the West.
Published Version
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