The Power of the Dog - Thomas Savage

The original 1967 book of the hit Netflix movie that's currently making all the running in the early stages of awards season.

It is 1924 and the end of the cowboy era in Montana.  The Burbank brothers, Phil and George, had taken over running the ranch since their parents retired to a hotel in Utah.  Phil is the traditional cowpoke, skilled in all the traditional western handcrafts, a man who pointedly disdains to wear gloves.  And yet he is a millionaire and something of an autodidact genius.  Younger brother George is plump and quiet and handles the business side of things.  The brothers live together, even sleep in the same bed, but George is a modern man who loves automobiles and who hankers after a normal life.

In what passes for a town is the widow Rose Gordon, whose husband came west to be a doctor but ended up a drunk who did the unforgivable and hanged himself.  Rose keeps a boarding house and devotes herself to her son Pete, a strange youth who wants to be a famous surgeon.  George Burbank, in his gentle, quiet way, courts Rose and marries her - which comes as a blow to Phil, confronted with an aspect of life that is alien and repugnant to him.

Phil sneakily undermines Rose, makes her life hell.  He is automatically antagonistic to sissy Pete when he comes to stay on the ranch during the school holidays.  But something about the boy - his solitary self-reliance, his way of learning, and yes, his courage - strikes a chord and wins Phil over.  He passes on his lore to the boy.  In his way, he loves him.  But years ago - the year before Johnny Gordon killed himself - Phil Burbank shamed him, broke him.  That's a grudge Johnny's son has kept and nurtured.  There is a price to be paid.

It really is a stunning feat of storytelling.  Yes, there are notes of True Grit and the novels of Larry McMurtry, but that was the era in which Savage wrote.  The way he handles the storylines, the dignity he gives his characters, even the minor ones, is very different.  His prose is magnificent, his sense of history shines in every line of description.  I loved it.

The Lost Get-Back Boogie - James Lee Burke

Another non-Robicheaux, non-genre novel from Burke, this from 1986 and nominated for a Pulitzer.  No wonder.  This is a genuine, deeply-considered novel of rural America.  Iry Paret is released from Angola Prison in Louisiana after killing a man.  He gets permission to serve out his parole in Montana, with a friend from prison, Buddy Riordan.  Iry plays hillbilly music on guitar, Buddy grooves on jazz and LSD.  Having just buried his own father (his mother died in a fire strongly reminiscent of the real-life drama of the young Woody Guthrie) Iry comes under the sway of Buddy's old man, Frank, an oldstyle ranching man bent on closing down the paper mills that provide most of the employment in that neck of the woods.

If anybody doubts Burke's gifts as a writer, they should read The Lost Get-Back Boogie.  Just as Iry makes his guitar sing, Burke has crafted every sentence of his story.  There are no wrong notes here.  It is a novel of history and character with the plot entirely and equally derived from both.  I can't recommend it too highly.

I see from Burke's website that he wrote a Civil War about ten years ago.  That's a must for me, then.