An Adventure for A Dime by Jo-Ann Roberts

Initially published around the time of the Civil War, the first dime novels were immensely popular. These sensational stories were full of romance and adventure and became wildly popular in both the United States and in England, where they were dubbed "penny dreadfuls". 

Dime novels typically told the dramatic adventure stories of a single hero or heroine who often found himself or herself in the midst of a moral dilemma. They were ethically sound, endorsing good character, and strong moral values, with the hero/heroine choosing virtue over vice.

The storylines were simple and told in in language that brought to mind concrete pictures and people for the readers. The books were simple in appearance, bound in inexpensive paper with brightly illustrated covers, easy to carry, and easy to pass around. Though the subject matter of the novels included detectives, the military, chaste romance, and even early science fiction, it was the Western dime novel that dominated the market.

In the beginning, these stories were about the American Indians, but when the Indians were forced onto reservations, the public's fascination with them began to fade. Consequently, the novels focused on cowboys in the Wild West, outlaws and bandits, and train robbers. 

In Victorian England, "penny dreadfuls" were written in the macabre Gothic tradition to frighten and thrill readers.

     

Dime novel stories would often feature a recurring hero such as Buffalo Bill, Deadwood Dick, Buckskin Sam, or Roving Joe. The printing house could then establish a series and garner a following for these heroes. These heroes were, of course, packaged in a fast-paced adventure story often described as

"blood and thunder". 

First issued by the New York printing firm of Irwin and Erasmus Beadle and Robert Adams, the dime novels were an immediate success.  Between 1860 and 1865 alone, Beadle and Adams published more than five million dime novels. During this time, the Civil War made soldiers a prime audience for the publishers who produced books that catered to the men needing a light diversion during the boredom that often came with camp life.

Writing these stories was a lucrative business for many late 19th century authors. A well-established author could earn up to $1,000 per story; a lesser established author could expect close to $50 per story. One such author, Prentiss Ingraham achieved success and fame as an author of the "Buffalo Bill" series. By his own account he penned 600 novels by 1900.

Another major publishing house, Street and Smith, viewed fiction as a commodity, and editors had strict authority over the authors' works. Each author was allowed limited room for creativity and was required to follow a specific formula in the plot lines and writing style. No wonder authors like Horatio Alger, Upton Sinclair, and Jack London wrote for Street and Smith under pen names!

  

However, not all authors wrote under pen names to save their reputations. Many authors were writers who were often journalists, teachers, or clerks simply looking to make a bit more money to supplement their current occupations. With the invention of the typewriter, authors were able to churn out stories at an unbelievable rate. One author, Frederic Marmaduke Van Rensselaer Dey, the creator of street-savvy detective Nick Carter, was rumored to put out 25,000 words every week for almost twenty years!

 

Although not as numerous as their male counterparts, female authors also found success in the dime novel market. The most notable among these was Ann S. Stephens. In 1860, she authored the very first Beadle's Dime Novel, "Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter".

Bertha Clay, Geraldine Fleming, and Laura Libbey were among the most prominent female authors who penned stories about the pioneers, sensational murder mysteries, and society romances aimed at a young, working, middle-class audience. All for Love of a Fair Face, The Story of a Wedding Ring, A Charity Girl, The Unseen Bridegroom, and Only a Mechanic's Daughter were among the most popular romance novels enjoyed by girls and women, and surprisingly by many men.

The dime novel craze heavily influenced pulp fiction magazines introduced in the 1890s. Rising postal rates may have caused a decline in the publication of the dime novels, but the content material and sentiment behind the works continue to influence publications even today. 

DIME NOVELS - TELEVISION OF THEIR DAY!

By Caroline Clemmons    

In the book I just released earlier this month, CHARLOTTE’S CHALLENGE, the hero is a devoted reader of (fictional) Missouri Kid dime novels. These cheap publications were popular and accessible to most people. When did they begin?

Much of the content of dime novels came from story papers, which were weekly, eight-page newspaper-like publications, varying in size from tabloid to full-size newspaper format and usually costing five or six cents. They started in the mid-1850s and were immensely popular, some titles being issued for over fifty years on a weekly schedule. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, later renamed Leslie's Weekly, was an American illustrated literary and news magazine founded in 1855 and published until 1922. It was one of several magazines started by publisher and illustrator Frank Leslie.

Dime novels and story papers are perhaps best described as the television of their day, containing a variety of serial stories and articles. Something was aimed at each member of the family, and often illustrated profusely with woodcuts. Popular story papers included The Saturday Journal, Young Men of America, Golden Weekly, Golden Hours, Good News, and Happy Days.

In 1860, the publishers Erastus and Irwin Beadle (What names!) released a new series of cheap paperbacks, Beadle's Dime Novels. Dime novel became a general term for similar paperbacks produced by various publishers in the early twentieth century. 

The first book in the Beadle series was Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, by Ann S. Stephens dated June 9, 1860. The novel was essentially a reprint of Stephens's earlier serial, which had appeared in the Ladies' Companion magazine in February, March and April 1839. It sold more than 65,000 copies in the first few months after its publication as a dime novel. I do hope she was well paid for her work but I suspect not. The first 28 were published without a cover illustration, in a salmon-colored paper wrapper. A woodblock print was added in issue 29, and the first 28 were reprinted with illustrated covers. The books were priced, of course, at ten cents.

This series ran for 321 issues and established almost all the conventions of the genre, from the lurid and outlandish story to the melodramatic double titling used throughout the series, which ended in the 1920s. Most of the stories were frontier tales reprinted from the numerous serials in the story papers and other sources, but many were original stories.

As the popularity of dime novels increased, original stories came to be the norm. The books were reprinted many times, sometimes with different covers, and the stories were often further reprinted in different series and by different publishers.

The literacy rate increased around the time of the American Civil War, and Beadle's Dime Novels were immediately popular among young, working-class readers. By the end of the war, numerous competitors, such as George Munro and Robert DeWitt, were crowding the field, distinguishing their product only by title and the color of the paper wrappers. Beadle & Adams had their own alternate "brands", such as the Frank Starr line. 

As a whole, the quality of the fiction was derided by highbrow critics, and the term dime novel came to refer to any form of cheap, sensational fiction, rather than the specific format. The English equivalents were generally called penny dreadfuls or shilling shockers.

The pocket-sized sea, Western, railway, circus, gold-digger, and other adventures were an instant success. In 1874, Beadle & Adams added the novelty of color to the covers when their New Dime Novels series replaced the flagship title. Beadle's New Dime Novels ran for 321 issues, until 1885.

Most of the stories in dime novels stood alone, but in the late 1880s series characters began to appear and quickly grew in popularity. The original Frank Reade stories first appeared in Boys of New York. The Old Sleuth, appearing in The Fireside Companion story paper beginning in 1872, was the first dime-novel detective and began the trend away from the western and frontier stories that dominated the story papers and dime novels up to that time. He was the first character to use the word sleuth to denote a detective, the word's original definition being that of a bloodhound trained to track. Nick Carter first appeared in 1886 in the New York Weekly. Frank Reade, the Old Sleuth and Nick Carter had their own ten-cent weekly titles within a few years.

In 1873, the house of Beadle & Adams introduced a new ten-cent format, with only 32 pages and a black-and-white illustration on the cover, under the title New and Old Friends. It was not a success, but the format was so much cheaper to produce that they tried again in 1877 with The Fireside Library and Frank Starr's New York Library. The first reprinted English love stories, the second contained hardier material, but both titles caught on

Publishers were no less eager to follow a new trend then than now. Frontier stories, evolving into westerns, were still popular, but the new vogue tended to urban crime stories. One of the most successful titles, Frank Tousey’s New York Detective Library eventually came to alternate stories of the James Gang with stories of Old King Brady, detective, and (in a rare occurrence in the dime novel) several stories which featured both, with Old King Brady doggedly on the trail of the vicious gang.

As it is now, the competition was fierce. Publishers were always looking for an edge. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Once again, color came into play when Frank Tousey introduced a weekly with brightly colored covers in 1896. Street & Smith countered by issuing a weekly in a smaller format with muted colors. The price was also dropped to five cents, making the magazines more accessible to children. This would be the last major change before it evolved into pulp magazines. Ironically, for many years it has been the nickel weeklies that most people refer to when using the term dime novel.

The nickel weeklies were popular, and their numbers grew quickly. Frank Tousey and Street & Smith dominated the field. Tousey had his "big six": Work and Win (featuring Fred Fearnot, a serious rival to the soon-to-be-popular Frank Merriwell), Secret Service, Pluck and Luck, Wild West Weekly, Fame and Fortune Weekly, and The Liberty Boys of '76, each of which issued over a thousand copies weekly. Street & Smith had New Nick Carter Weekly, Tip Top Weekly, Buffalo Bill Stories, Jesse James Stories, Brave & Bold Weekly and many others. The Tousey stories were generally the more lurid and sensational of the two.

Perhaps the most confusing of the various formats lumped together under the term dime novel are the so-called "thick-book" series, most of which were published by Street & Smith, J. S. Ogilvie and Arthur Westbrook. These books were published in series, contained roughly 150 to 200 pages, often with color covers on a higher-grade stock. They reprinted multiple stories from the five- and ten-cent weeklies, often slightly rewritten to tie them together.

All dime-novel publishers were canny about reusing and refashioning material, but Street & Smith excelled at it. They developed the practice of publishing four consecutive, related tales of, for example, Nick Carter, in the weekly magazine, then combining the four stories into one edition of the related thick-book series, in this instance, the New Magnet Library. This reminds me of today’s authors taking several of a series and making them into a box set.

The thick books were still in print as late as the 1930s but carry the copyright date of the original story, often as early as the late nineteenth century, leading some dealers and new collectors today to erroneously assume they have original dime novels when the books are only distantly related.

By the turn of the century, new high-speed printing techniques combined with cheaper pulp paper allowed him to drop the price of Argosy from twenty-five cents to ten cents, and sales of the magazine took off. 

In 1910, Street and Smith converted two of their nickel weeklies, New Tip Top Weekly and Top Notch Magazine, into pulps. In 1915, Nick Carter Stories, itself a replacement for the New Nick Carter Weekly, became Detective Story Magazine. In 1919, New Buffalo Bill Weekly became Western Story Magazine. Harry Wolff, the successor in interest to the Frank Tousey titles, continued to reprint many of them into the mid-1920s. 

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, collecting dime novels became popular, and prices soared. Even at that time, the cheap publications were crumbling into dust and becoming hard to find. I had one of these from my family from the early twentieth century but it eventually did just what you read above—it crumbled to dust.

 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dime_novel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Leslie%27s_Illustrated_Newspaper 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Universal buy link is https://mybook.to/Bret Available in e-book, print, and enrolled in Kindle Unlimited.

A widow determined to save the family ranch…

A man who inherited cursed pirate gold…

They must combine efforts to defeat an evil man.

 

Bret Craig is a descendant of one of the crew of The Golden Fleece. Over a century ago the merchant ship had prevailed against pirates carrying a treasure of cursed Inca gold. The legacy promises retribution against anyone who misuses the treasure. Bret has heard the story all his life but he believes the tale is a myth and that he’s in no danger if he spends the money selfishly. Ignoring his sister’s warning, he sets out for a grand adventure heading west.

Widowed former mail-order bride Charlotte Dunn is in danger of losing the family ranch. She lost her husband to a rustler’s bullet when half the cattle were stolen and both ranch hands were killed. When she and her stepsons rescue a man who fell from his horse, they learn the man has amnesia. From his saddlebags, they determine his name is Bret Craig. Charlotte nurses Bret, manages the ranch, and cares for her three stepchildren she loves. No sooner does Bret regain his memory than they discover the remainder of the ranch’s herd has been rustled.

Bret re-evaluates his priorities in order to embrace the love blossoming between Charlotte and him. Can they save the ranch and recover the stolen cattle?

 Great reviews so  far!

DIME NOVELS LED TO ROMANCE WESTERN STYLE

Dime Novels led to
western romance

By Caroline Clemmons

How many times have your heard the term dime novel? Do you think of the frontier west, or of detective stories?

Dime novel, though it has a specific meaning, has also become a catch-all term for several different (but related) forms of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular fiction, including "true" dime novels, story papers, five- and ten-cent weekly libraries, "thick book" reprints, and sometimes even early pulp magazines. The term was being used as late as 1940, in the short-lived pulp Western Dime Novels.

Dime novels are, at least in spirit, the antecedent of today’s mass market paperbacks, comic books, and even television shows and movies based on the dime novel genres. Dime novels provided easily understood entertainment for anyone who could read, and at an affordable price. A dime would have been a sizable investment in the mid 19th century, but a novel can be re-read many times and/or traded with another family.

In the modern age, dime novel has become a term to describe any quickly written, lurid potboiler and as such is generally used as a derisive term to describe a sensationalized yet superficial piece of written work.

A Beadles'
Dime Novels
edition

Generally, historians agree that the term dime novel originated with the first book in Beadle & Adam's Beadle’s Dime Novels series, MALEASKA, THE INDIAN WIFE OF THE WHITE HUNTER, by Ann S. Stephens, dated June 9, 1860. Aha! A female author breaking in a new tradition!

The novel was essentially a reprint of Stephens's earlier serial that appeared in the Ladies' Companion Magazine in February, March, and April 1839. The dime novels varied in size, even within this first Beadle series, but were roughly 6.5 by 4.25 inches, with 100 pages.

The first 28 were published without a cover illustration, in a salmon colored paper wrapper, but a woodblock print was added with issue 29, and reprints of the first 28 had an illustration added to the cover. Of course, the books were priced at ten cents.

This series ran for 321 issues, and established almost all the conventions of the genre, from the lurid and outlandish story to the melodramatic double titling that was used right up to the very end in the 1920s. Most of the stories were frontier tales (Works for me!) reprinted from the vast backlog of serials in the story papers and other sources, as well as many originals.

As the popularity of dime novels increased, original stories came to be the norm. The books were themselves reprinted many times, sometimes with different covers, and the stories were often further reprinted in different series, and by different publishers.

Dime novels and papers

Beadle’s Dime Novels were immediately popular among young, working-class audiences, owing to an increased literacy rate around the time of the American Civil War. By the War’s end, there were numerous competitors like George Munro and Robert DeWitt crowding the field, distinguishing their product only by title and the color choice of the paper wrappers.

As a whole, the quality of the fiction was derided by higher brow critics and the term dime novel quickly came to represent any form of cheap, sensational fiction, rather than the specific format.


The New Dime Novel Series introduced color covers, but reprinted stories from the original series. In 1874, Beadle & Adams, through the added novelty of color to the covers (see photo in first paragraph above), their New Dime Novels series replaced the flagship title. The New Dime Novels were issued with a dual numbering system on the cover, one continuing the numbering from the first series, and the second and more prominent one indicating the number within the current series, i.e., the first issue was numbered 1. The stories were largely reprints from the first series. Like its predecessor, Beadle’s New Dime Novels ran for 321 issues, until 1885.

As noted, much of the material for the dime novels came from the story papers, which were weekly, eight page newspaper-like publications, varying in size from tabloid to a full fledged newspaper format, and usually costing five or six cents. They started in the mid 1850’s and were immensely popular, some titles running for over fifty years on a weekly schedule. They are perhaps best described as the television of their day, containing a variety of serial stories and articles, with something aimed at each members of the family, and often illustrated profusely with woodcut illustrations. Popular story papers included The Saturday Journal, Young Men of America, Golden Weekly, Golden Hours, Good News, Happy Days.

Although the larger part of the stories stood alone, in the late 1880s series characters began to appear and quickly grew in popularity. The original Frank Reade stories first appeared in Boys of New York. Old Sleuth, appearing in The Fireside Companion story paper beginning in 1872, was the first dime novel detective and began the trend away from the western and frontier stories that dominated the story papers and dime novels up to that time. He was the first character to use the word "sleuth" to denote a detective, the word’s original definition being that of a bloodhound trained to track. And he also is responsible for the popularity of the use of the word "old" in the names of competing dime novel detectives, such as Old Cap Collier, Old Broadbrim, Old King Brady, Old Lightning, Old Ferret and many, many others. Nick Carter first appeared in 1886 in The New York Weekly. All three characters would graduate to their own ten-cent weekly titles within a few years.

Black and
white version

In 1873, the house of Beadle & Adams had introduced a new ten-cent format, 9 by 13.25 inches, with only 32 pages and a black and white illustrated cover, with the title New and Old Friends. It was not a success, but the format was so much cheaper to produce that they tried again in 1877. The Fireside Library, the first reprinted English love stories, and Frank Starr’s New York Library, which contained hardier material. Both titles caught on. Publishers were no less eager to follow a new trend then than now. Soon the newsstands were flooded by ten-cent weekly "libraries". Each issue tended to feature a single story, as opposed to the story papers, and many of them were devoted to single characters. Frontier stories, evolving into westerns (Yay!), were still popular, but the new vogue tended to urban crime stories. One of the most successful titles, Frank Tousey’s New York Detective Library eventually came to alternate stories of the James Gang with stories of Old King Brady, detective, and in a rare occurrence in the dime novel world, there were several stories which featured them both, with Old King Brady doggedly on the trail of the vicious gang.

As now, the competition was fierce, and publishers were always looking for an edge. Once again, color came into the fray when Frank Tousey introduced a weekly with brightly colored covers in 1896. Street & Smith countered by issuing a smaller format weekly with muted colors Such titles as New Nick Carter Weekly (continuing the original black and white Nick Carter Library), Tip-Top Weekly (introducing Frank Merriwell) and others were 7 x 10 with thirty-two pages of story, but the 8.5 x 11 Tousey format carried the day and Street & Smith, soon followed suit. The price was also dropped to five cents, making the magazines more accessible to children. This would be the last major permutation of the product before it evolved into pulp magazines. Ironically, for many years it has been the nickel weeklies that most people refer to when using the term "dime novel."


The nickel weeklies proved very popular, and their numbers grew quickly. Frank Tousey and Street & Smith dominated the field. Tousey had his "big six": Work and Win (featuring Fred Fearnot, a serious rival to the soon to be popular Frank Merriwell) Secret Service, Pluck and Luck, Wild West Weekly, Fame and Fortune, and The Liberty Boys of ’76, all of which ran over a thousand weekly issues apiece. Street & Smith had New Nick Carter Weekly, Tip Top Weekly, Buffalo Bill Stories, Jesse James Stories, Brave & Bold Weekly and many others. The Tousey stories were on the whole the more lurid and sensational of the two. And wasn't there a series with a hero named Jack Armstrong?

Thick-book...
Is he stealing
her jewels  or
comforting her?

Perhaps the most confusing of all the various formats that are lumped together under the term dime novel are the so-called "thick-book" series, largely published by Street & Smith, J. S. Ogilvie and Arthur Westbrook. These books were published in series, ran roughly 150-200 pages, and were 4.75 by 7 inches, often with color covers on a higher grade stock. They reprinted multiple stories from the five- and ten-cent weeklies, often slightly rewritten to tie the material together.  I have one of the thick book novels handed down in my family. Unfortunately, it’s in tatters now, but I’ve saved it anyway. I wish I knew more about the history of the specific book I have.


All dime novel publishers were canny about repurposing material, but Street & Smith made it more of an art form. Hmmm, does this remind you of one or two of today's publishers? The dime novel publishers developed the practice of publishing four consecutive, related tales of, for example, Nick Carter, in the weekly magazine, then combining the four stories into one edition of the related thick book series, in this instance, the New Magnet Library. The Frank Merriwell stories appeared in the Medal, New Medal and Merriwell Libraries, Buffalo Bill in the Buffalo Bill Library and Far West Library, and so on.

*Note: What confuses many dealers and new collectors today is that though the thick books were still in print as late as the 1930s, they carry the original copyright date of the story, often as early as the late nineteenth century, leading some to assume they have original dime novels when the books are only distantly related.

In 1896, Frank Munsey had converted his juvenile magazine, The Argosy, into a fiction magazine for adults and the first pulp. By the turn of the century, new high-speed printing techniques combined with the cheaper pulp paper allowed him to drop the price from twenty five cents to ten cents, and the magazine really took off.

In 1910 Street and Smith converted two of their nickel weeklies, New Tip Top Weekly and Top Notch Magazine, into pulps; in 1915, Nick Carter Stories, itself a replacement for the New Nick Carter Weekly, morphed into Detective Story Magazine, and in 1919, New Buffalo Bill Weekly became Western Story Magazine. Harry Wolff, the successor in interest to the Frank Tousey titles, continued to reprint many of them up into the mid 1920s, most notably Secret Service, Pluck and Luck, Fame and Fortune, and Wild West Weekly. The latter two were purchased by Street & Smith in 1926 and converted into pulp magazines the following year. That effectively ended the reign of the dime novel.

Julie Garwood's
PRINCE CHARMING

Dime novels endeared western lore to the nation, even spreading throughout the world. Read Julie Garwood’s PRINCE CHARMING (one of my all-time favorite novels) for a look at how they spread to the UK and a young English woman took them to heart. Who knew her fascination would prepare her for the ordeal to come when she must save her young niece and nephew?

People followed the exploits of legendary heroes in the West. Talk about literary license? The fact that most of the tales were pure drivel didn’t matter a whit to their eager audience. The lure was cast, and many took the bait and headed to America’s West.

But what began my personal love of the West? In the evenings, my dad often told stories of his family coming to Texas after the Civil War. I couldn’t hear enough of those tales. Even after I’d memorized them, I urged him to retell each one. And guess who sneaked peaks at his detective magazines when he was at work?

Roy Rogers

Next came the movies: Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Lone Ranger, Hoppalong Cassidy. Have I forgotten any? Personally, I wanted to ride the range with Roy, saving the West from the bank robbers and rustlers I was certain plagued the land. My family and I watched "Bonanza," "Gunsmoke," "Rifleman," "Maverick," and others and never tired of them. Then life intervened, as it did for all would-be cowgirls and cowboys. 



Kathleen
Woodiwiss

 As an adult, I discovered Louis L’Amour. Don’t hate me, but you can have Kathleen Woodiwiss’ books. You gasp, and I hope you’re not gathering tar and feathers! I met her once at a Houston writer’s conference and I readily admit she was a lovely person and we owe her a huge debt for popularizing historical romance novels. As well, I love the books of many other western romance authors, and especially the writers who are members of this blog!



Louis
L'Amour

 However, Louis L’Amour is my author hero--as you learned if you read my post a few months ago. I’ve read each of his books at least twice, and several of them too many times to count. FALLON is my personal favorite: what woman can resist a man who thinks he’s bad but is actually a good, hard working, clever man protective of others?



Cattle drive

 I usually choose to write about 1870-1890 and the time of the Texas cattle drives. Yeehaw! Yes, I also write contemporary cowboys, but none are more appealing to me than those of the late 19th century. So many things fascinate me about this time period. Would I have wanted to live then instead of now? Are you crazy? I like my current creature comforts, thank you, but I love reading and writing about that earlier time.

In that time period, the Civil War and Reconstruction were over, yet law and order was far from established. Men--and women--were often isolated and had to defend themselves and their families. If there was an area lawman, he was often too far away to offer immediate help.

When the Civil War was over, men returned home (if they still had one). In Texas and a few other states, many unbranded cattle had bred during the war and ran wild. An industrious man could gather these and place his own brand on them, then drive them to market in Kansas. According to T. H. Fehrenback in his book LONE STAR: A HISTORY OF TEXAS AND THE TEXANS, cattle sold for two dollars a head in Texas in 1875, but brought ten dollars a head in Kansas. Since cowboys made the same wage per month and received the same food regardless of where they rode, it cost no more for a rancher to have his ranch hands drive cattle to market. Fortunes were built during this time!



Comanche
by Frederick Remington

 The wealth didn’t come without cost. Danger lurked everywhere in the West, but on the trail hazards multiplied. Indians, rustlers posing as Indians, rustlers posing as law men, and a plethora of bad men wanted the benefit of others’ hard work.

Then there were the natural disasters: swollen rivers, lightning storms, and stampedes. Plus Texas cattle sometimes carried tick fever and threatened to infect cattle in other states. Cattlemen from the intervening areas crusaded to block Texas cattle from crossing into their area, and it’s no wonder, is it? The astonishing fact is that any cattle made it to market.




Couple riding
at sunset

  Yes, you say, but how can it be a romance when there were no women on cattle drives. You’re right, you’re so right. Cowboys are a superstitious lot, and they believed women on a drive brought bad luck. In that way, cattle drives are far from romantic.



The Most Unsuitable Wife
Available now at
Amazon Kindle
and Smashwords


If you’ve read my book THE MOST UNSUITABLE WIFE (available for only 99 cents from Amazon Kindle), you learned that wives were not invited on a cattle drive. Definitely! No, it’s not the actual cattle drive that appeals to me, but the era. A young man with nothing could homestead land, gather unbranded cattle or buy a few head, and create a small ranch. With hard work and perseverance, he could expand. Of course, then he’d need a wife to share his life. They’d face trouble--it always came--and stand side by side to triumph. Well, that’s the way it happens in my novels.

Mail-Order
Brides' memoirs,
HEARTS WEST
by Chris Enss

Women from areas where most young men had died in the Civil War didn’t have to remain spinsters. They could travel West and marry, sometimes via mail-order arrangements. How many mail-order western romances have your read? I’ve read too many to count, but I still love them. There were wagon trains heading West (love those wagon train romances, too!), then stages and locomotives. By traveling West, a single woman had an opportunity for a family of her own. I think I’d have risked it, wouldn’t you?

Reading about people who adapt to new circumstances, meet obstacles they’d never imagined, and triumph while finding a soul mate is very romantic. Who wouldn’t love a tale like that?

Hand me that book by Celia Yeary, would you? Yes, the one that was a finalist for The Romance Reviews Best Books of 2010, TEXAS TRUE. Sure I've read it, but I reread favorites, don't you? I’m in the mood to read more about romance under western skies. If you share that mood, why not try a book by one of the Sweethearts of the West authors?