The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 105, July 2001 - April, 2002 Page: 184
741 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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184 Southwestern Historical Quarterly July
his essays and magazine articles. Many of his stories are set in the panhandle of
Texas, the Taos, New Mexico, area, or northeast Mexico. Evans has also made a
name for himself as a novelist, and several of his works, most notably The
Rounders and The Hz Lo Country have been filmed.
Evans has done a lot in life. He paints, he has prospected, he's been a journal-
ist, he has ranched. After failing in the mining business, Evans decided that he
would try writing. He has done well in this field. His stories and characters tend
to be unforgettable. He really has the storyteller's gift and a style that is out of the
ordinary. In the introduction to this anthology, he says, "Since we are all tempo-
rary to one degree or another, we should be humble and at the same time thank-
ful for whatever tracks-no matter how few-we make in the vanishing desert of
words" (p. xv). That's a great metaphor for a Texas/New Mexico writer to use.
The selection in this anthology is outstanding. It contains five short novels,
seven essays, ten short stories, five forewords, and six magazine articles. As a
teacher, I appreciate the inclusion of material like forewords and magazine arti-
cles. These are facets of a writer's outlook that are often difficult for a student or
scholar to view.
My favorite of the selections in this anthology is the short novel My Partner, a
real classic of the literature of the southwest. Along the lines of Huckleberry Fznn
or "Tennessee Partner," it is a story of friendship and coming of age set in the
late 193os. A young boy of twelve going on thirteen (Dan) and his partner,
Boggs, are assigned the task of driving a small herd of five mules and sixteen
horses from Jal, New Mexico, to Guyman, Oklahoma. Dan's Papa hands him a
map and three dollars. Dan and Boggs are supposed to take sixty days to drive
the herd to Guyman, moving slowly so that the horses can graze and fatten up
along the way (fatten up on other people's pastures in other words!). It's an epic
journey involving hardscrabble survival. Dan learns such skills as getting a rabbit
out of a hole with a piece of barbed wire and how to take a chicken off its roost.
At journey's end, Dan is much wiser in the ways of the world and has had an
education of the sort one gets only in the college of experience.
This book is a good introduction to Max Evans and gives the reader a taste of
Evans's versatility as a southwestern writer. I hope that Texas Tech Press issues
more volumes of this sort on Texas writers.
Midland College RUSSELL H. GOODYEAR
Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Women Suffrage Question. By Elna C.
Green. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Pp.
xviii+287. Preface, acknowledgments, conclusion, appendix, notes, bibliog-
raphy, index. ISBN 0-8078-4641-4. $17.95, paper.)
On August 13, 192o, the thirty-sixth and final state ratified the Nineteenth
Amendment that enfranchised American women. Ironically, Tennessee, a south-
ern state, secured that ultimate goal in a region where suffragists had the hard-
est fight and least success. Widespread opposition to women in politics and a
commitment to the traditional role of "the southern lady" had prevented the
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 105, July 2001 - April, 2002, periodical, 2002; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101222/m1/192/?rotate=90: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.