The sea of grass

Conrad Richter

St. Louis woman travels to New Mexico to wed rancher, only to find that his first love is "sea of grass" where thousands of cattle roam and open-range cattlemen fight against small-town farmers. "That lusty pioneer blood is tamed now, broken and gelded like the wild horse and the frontier settlement." From that first poignant line to the glowing passage at the end, this novel is a work of art, enchanting the reader by the beauty of its prose at the same time that it rouses him by its passionate drama. A love-story, full of tenderness and sorrow, it is also a picture of a time forever lost and a way of life that now exists only in the memories of garrulous oldsters. Here is the Southwest in all its bravado and brutality, its color and violence, eternally fascinating even when filtered through the tale of a woman who hated it. Mr. Richter in this book confirms the high promise of his superb short stories of the Southwest published last year in the volume called Early Americana. The tragic conflict is laid bare immediately when James Brewton, lord of the greatest ranch in all Texas, bold, inexhaustible, and merciless, brings to his lawless land the girl he will marry--a girl of incomparable loveliness, gentle, soft, cultivated. yet strong and willful in her own fragile way. The very morning of her arrival she witnessed an episode in the cruel battle between the herdsmen, led by her bridegroom, and the settlers, whole families of starvelings who had migrated to the virgin territory, led by a young lawyer driven half by ambition and half by gallantry. The lines were drawn then, and there could be no truce until time had cooled the blood and history itself resolved the war. But how much they lived through until that truce, how many sleepless nights, how many regrets, how much pain! The reader turns the last page secure in the knowledge that he, too, has lived through something profound in the unfolding of this story--and the emotion it has evoked will haunt him for more than a day.--Jacket.