A Book Review: Sackett's Land

With this book begins the saga of the Sackett family, taking us from the 16th century fen country of England, to watch Shakespeare perform in London, to pirate ships off the Carolina coast, to the far blue hills of the Great Smokies, over the plains of Missouri and on into Texas, Colorado, Arizona, all the way to the little pueblo town of Los Angeles, in a series of stories so well researched that you will learn much American history that was never in your textbooks: not only about lonely yet heroic cow punchers, but about the prehistory of the continent, about Mexico's old culture in these new "United States," about diverse Indian tribes, real, individualized, and un-stereotyped.

These tales are not just "cowboy stories," and they are more than mere history. They pierce to the core of human nature, manhood, womanhood, what it means to be native, what it means to be a wanderer, what it means to be in exile, what it means to search for one's lost father, what it means to comfort one's old mother. Intricately plotted and ripe with character, these novels ripple with human figures that remind us of the heroes of Greek tragedy and the oldest stories of the Bible.

In style, many passages are as good as anything Hemingway ever wrote, but the characters are more noble. I majored in English at an "ivy league" university, I've taught it for a generation, and I say to hell with any distinction between "highbrow" and "lowbrow" literature. Louis L'Amour is one of the greatest story tellers, if not THE greatest, in our national history. Reading him has not only made me a better American, but a better man.