STANDS A CALDER MAN

by Janet Dailey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1982

It's the Calders' Montana again (This Calder Sky, This Calder Range)--but if sure don't look like the farmers and the cowboys will be friends, any more than in Oklahoma! All the poor pinched homesteaders--egged on by the provisions of the 1909 Homestead Act and shifty speculators--are setting up around the town of Blue Moon and the Calders' Triple C ranch. And big Benteen Calder knows and dreads what the farmers' plows will de to rich buffalo grass. But what really worries Benteen, besides the weather and the new immigrants and the rascally goings-on, is son Webb--a leather-pounder who wants to make his own way, not ""just inherit"" the Triple C. Even worse, Webb will fall violently in love (all Dailey's Calders love violent) with Lilli, an orphan (of German parents) who has married elderly Stefan, a family friend. And though Webb's mother Lorna tries to steer him toward nice Ruth, Lilli has ""eyes blue as the Montana sky."" So, while Webb and Lilli sneak in golden moments, there's increasing tension between the cowboys and the increasingly numerous farmers. Bad guys on both sides will set fires, dispossess folks from their shacks, and aim guns. Stefan finally tries to kill Webb after a night when he and Lilli are snowed in. But the angry husband will providentially die of natural typhoid; Benteen and Lorna also expire. And though Lilli will be killed by a hate-fueled settler, there'll be a wedding and the birth of a new Calder heir, Chase Benteen. . . who's sure to star in the next Son-of-Calder saga. With Dailey's lazily lasso-ed research (Montana history and ""dry-land"" farming methods): another silver-spur oater, energized by rawhide men and lily-skinned (but never lily-hearted) women.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1982

ISBN: 0671040502

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pocket Books--dist. by Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1982

Categories: FICTION