Sandhills Boy: The Winding Trail of a Texas Writer

By Elmer Kelton

Book Overview

"One thing is certain," a reviewer in "True West Magazine" recently said, "as long as there are writers as skillful as Elmer Kelton, Western literature will never die."Few would disagree with the assessment of the man whose peers voted the "Best Western writer of all time" and whose 50 novels form a testament and tribute to the American West. But who "is" that Texas gentleman with the white Stetson and rimless eyeglasses whose friendly face appears on so many book jackets? "Sandhills Boy" is Kelton's memoir, a funny and poignant story of "a freckle-faced country boy, green as a gourd, a sheep ready to be sheared," growing up in the wild, dry, sandhills of West Texas. The son of a working cowboy and ranch foreman, Elmer was expected to follow in father's footsteps but learned at an early age that he had no talents in the cowboy's trade. Buck Kelton called Elmer "Pop," said he was "slow as the seven-year itch," and reluctantly supported his son's decision to become a student at the University of Texas, and, eventually, a journalist and writer. Kelton's life in ranch and oil patch Texas during the Great Depression is told with warm nostalgic humor animated with stories of the cowboys and their wives and kids who gave the time and place its special flavor. He writes with great feeling of his service in WW2 in France, Germany, and Czechoslovakia, and the romantic circumstances in which his life changed in the village of Ebensee, Austria.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765315211
• ISBN13: 9780765315212
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

I Wanted More, I Guess From Kelton

Sandhills Boy disappointed me, for I expected more about his writing of novels than of his life as an agricultural reporter. Yes, I expected to hear of his family history and about ranch life in Texas, and his WWII experience and marriage, but I missed not knowing more about his writing career. I think Forge missed the mark by not having a bibliography attached to the book, a list of pen names he wrote under and such as that. Otherwise, it is insightful into how he lived all those years in Texas. This book was a disappointment for me. Sorry.

A most enjoyable and candid memoir - excellent!

I didn't grow up in west Texas, but I spent a couple months in San Angelo over 30 years ago, on temporary duty with the army at Goodfellow AF Base there. It was my first time in Texas, and what I remember most is the vastness of the plain that stretched away from GAFB, and how you could watch a storm approaching from miles away. It was kind of a topographical revelation to this Michigan kid. Kelton's description of his youth on a dry land ranch near Midland, TX, made me remember those days. Since Kelton wrote more than 60 books in his lifetime - and I've read a few of them - I was not surprised at the sterling quality of this memoir. When he told of being a 17 year-old student at UT Austin in 1941 when the US entered WWII, and still to shy to talk to the girls who vastly outnumbered the "men" on campus, I was reminded of the Iowa farm memoirs of Curtis Harnack, who was in basically the same boat as a too-young student at tiny Grinell College at the same time. Kelton easily makes his story a kind of everyman tale, telling how his father had very little patience with his teenage sons when they worked for him, expecting them to just "know" how to do things without his always having to explain. The truth is fathers always expect more of their sons than they do of other people's children, or even of paid employees. I remember it well. He also tells of how difficult it was for his father to express his true feelings - aside from anger and impatience - regarding his sons. Been there too. Kelton's time in the army during the closing days of the war are also tellingly described - the cold and hunger, the fear and the loneliness. Much space is devoted to how he met his wife in Austria at the end of the war, how they fell in love and dealt with all the red tape of bringing her to America for a marriage that would last for over 60 years. There is plenty here about west Texas, about its harshness and its beauty, and especially about its people. It is filled with anecdotes about family members, ranch hands, cowboys, and various other characters that Kelton rubbed up against in his 83 years of living. Kelton died in August of this year, but his books about Texas and the West will be around for a long time. I hope this particular book will endure too. It's a good one. - Tim Bazzett, author of SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA

A Texas Writer's Story

I've read most, if not all, of Elmer Kelton's books, The Good Old Boys and Cloudy in the West among my favorites, so I was eager to read this story of his life, so far. I especially enjoyed his growing up years in Texas. However the rest, his stint in the army, meeting the love of his life in Austria, and his life after the war was interesting. It's a quiet story, all without fanfare and glamour, must I suspect like the man himself. He mentions steeples (used to fix fence). I'd always called them staples. It may be a regional or generational term. Anyway, it's a good book. Eunice Boeve author of Ride a Shadowed Trail

Young writer from Texas . . .

Fortunately, though he grew up on a ranch in West Texas, Elmer Kelton by his own admission did not make a good cowboy. Instead, he became one of the best writers of historical western fiction, and this is his personal story. Born in 1926, the oldest of four boys, his father the foreman of a large ranch near Midland, Texas, Kelton devotes much of this autobiography to his early years and what it was like for his family during the Depression. Somewhat shy and bookish, he chose a career in journalism, interrupted while he was at the University of Texas by a year in the Army at the end of WWII. Stationed in Austria, he met his wife Anni, and he tells of their courtship, her immigration to the U.S., and their life together in West Texas. Readers hoping for more of a story about his struggles, emergence, and recognition as a writer may be disappointed that he has so little to say about that. My favorite of his novels, "The Day the Cowboys Quit," gets only a brief mention. I would love to have learned more about the historical research and the creative choices that went into the writing of that book. I have also wondered how his more popular fiction, such as the Texas Rangers trilogy, manages to be both action-packed and historically accurate - unlike writers like Louis L'Amour, who focus mainly on the action. All in all, Kelton fans will enjoy this book. It is a congenial read, self-effacing in many ways, and even a little apologetic, as if he regrets that he was never a "good cowboy." The chapters are illustrated with about two dozen photographs, mostly from the 1930s and 1940s. He gives the last word to his wife, Anni, who contributes the final chapter.

Sandhills Boys

This was a very entertaining book about the life of autor Elmer Kelton. I enjoyed all the stories about his parents and brothers as well as neighbors and friend he had known over the years. I highly recommend this book to all Elmer Kelton fans.

Vintage Kelton

This book is Elmer Kelton at his best. He talks about his childhood days in various locations in West Texas, about the oilfield days that followed and parralled the "Cowboying" days, and about his joining the army and being stationed in various areas of Europe, with the primary empahsis on Austria, where he met his one true love. I have read everything that Mr. Kelton has written, and every time another book comes out, I buy it. He truly is the very best when it comes to showing the face and grit of those early West Texans.