GRASS KINGDOM BY JORY SHERMAN (1994)

Grass Kingdom has a relatively modern Western setting, specifically cattle ranches in the Hill Country of Texas during the 1930s and early '40s. It tells a soap opera-like story of three intertwined families as they battle drought, mesquite thickets, rustlers, and each other to carve out modern dynasties. It reminds me very much of the television show Dallas, and like that modern day Western, it is addictive, although often a guilty pleasure because the writing is actually not very good at all.

Sherman has the annoying habit of describing in detail the most mundane of actions. For example, here is his account of a man lighting his pipe: "He dug into his saddlebags, fished out his pipe and a battered can of Prince Albert. He shook tobacco into the briar bowl, tamped it down with his thumb. Wedging the pipestem between his teeth, he took a small box of wooden matches from his shirt pocket. He took one stick out, raked it along the sandpaper side. The sulfurous head exploded into flame with a hiss of escaping gas. Matt touched thee flame to the tobacco, drew air through the pipe. The tobacco caught and he shook out the match. He mashed the charred head between his thumb and forefinger until it grew cold." He also describes almost every character, even minor walk-ons, in detail, and even includes their horses: ""The big rangy Tennessee Walking Horse paced at the end of his manila tether.The sorrel gelding stood sixteen and a half hands high, with four white stockings, flax mane and tail, a small white blaze on its forehead. The horse was six years old, the usual high sheen of its curry-combed hide fading after two days of trail dust and range sweat." This 482-page book could have been cut by a third if all the extraneous bits had been left out.

I also found it annoying that Sherman's geographical/weather picture of Texas is wrong. The only actual real town he mentions is Bandera, and I live about 100 miles west of there, so I know the area. He begins his story in February and tells of flowers blooming and the weather so hot that men become bathed in sweat while just standing around talking. It may be relatively warm in this part of Texas, but it's not tropical. He also mentions several times that the characters smell the Gulf of Mexico, and that's just not possible from Bandera or its vicinity.

Also, some of the grammar is jarringly bad, with misplaced and dangling modifiers and suchlike.

But as I said initially, the story is addictive.

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Amusingly, the writer hired to concoct the back--of-book story description on my paperback copy of the novel obviously had not actually read the book, because he says that the characters are "determined to carve a piece of the Texas panhandle...."