A mother and daughter find courage and humor to live through life's troubles.

The Cecil family travels by riverboat and wagon from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming.

Bo Mason and his wife and two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair; drifting from town to town, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks his fortune. Stegner has created a masterful, harrowing saga of a family trying to survive during the lean years of the early 20th century.

In the Wandering Hill, Larry McMurtry continues the story of Tasmin Berrybender and her family in the still unexplored Wild West of the 1830s, at the point in time when the Mountain men and trappers like Jim Bridger and Kit Carson though still alive, are already legendary figures...

It is 1830, and the Berrybender family -- rich, aristocratic, English, and hopelessly out of place -- is on its way up the Missouri River to see the untamed West as it begins to open up. With irascible determination -- and a great deal of outright chaos -- the party experiences both the awesome majesty and brutal savagery of the unexplored land, from buffalo stampedes and natural disasters to Indian raids and encounters with frontiersmen and trappers,...

"The golden age of the Western: four unforgettable novels of honor, adventure, and violence set against the magnificent landscapes of the American West"-- "In the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Ox-Bow Incident, Walter van Tilburg Clark explores the thin line between civilization and barbarism through the story of a lynch mob that targets three innocent men, exposing a dark authoritarian impulse at work the American frontier. Set in Wyoming in 1889, a...

Husband and father Monte Becket, unable to repeat the success of his first novel despite years of attempts, leaves his family behind in Minnesota in 1915 to join self-confessed rascal Glendon Hale, an aging train robber, on a journey in search of the wife he abandoned nearly two decades earlier--pursued by ex-Pinkerton detective Charles Siringo every step of the way.

"In 1865, Goldie O'Neill was nine years of age when she trekked across the unclaimed American West with her family to form their own Irish catholic Colony. Their new community had dreams of self-governance and prosperity far removed from the anti-Irish sentiment and prejudice of the ruling classes. They soon learned about the extremes of the American West and the ongoing Indian war. A year after their arrival, Goldie blames herself for her sister's...

Four generations of the Paint family come into focus through events surrounding the funeral of Eli Paint's estranged granddaughter and the shotgun wedding of his young great-granddaughter, Emaline. First, Eli misses the funeral, then crashes his car upon returning to his Wyoming ranch. After the accident, however, Eli and Juanita, his housekeeper, declare their love. Meanwhile, Emaline's marriage to Jake, an aging prizefighter, isn't going well; after...