BORN OF THE SUN

The genre may be that of the Western- but the quality of the substance and the telling removes this from the standard brand. Through the adventures of a boy who came to Texas in his early teens, wise in the ways of working the land, orphaned by the Civil War, one watches the boy grow as the frontier widens. Those were days in Texas when a gun was an implement of daily living, when hostile Indians and lawless men threatened the peace of the frontier, when the development of Texas and the maturing of the youth kept pace. Plot is secondary here to history and regional flavor, but the tensions of the cattle drives over into Kansas, the gunmen, the ranchers, and their women, the floods, and all the factors that made for life in the wild northwest of Texas add up to sound Americana.