Synopses & Reviews
“The Smiling Country is about a footloose puncher who finds out the hard way that cowboys don't remain young forever and that the inevitable wear and tear of a rugged life forces changes and compromises on the willing and unwilling alike.”— Elmer Kelton
Hewey Calloway did not know how old he was without stopping to figure, and that distracted his attention from matters of real importance.
Elmer Kelton introduced Texas cowboy Hewey Calloway, one of the most beloved characters in Western fiction, almost thirty years ago in The Good Old Boys. The novel was transformed into a memorable 1995 TV film starring Tommy Lee Jones and Sissy Spacek.
Hewey returns in The Smiling Country. It is 1910 and his freewheeling life is coming to an end—the fences, trucks, and automobiles he hates are creeping in even to remote Alpine, in the “smiling country” of West Texas. When he is badly injured trying to break a renegade horse, Hewey sees the loneliness that awaits him, and regrets his decision to run away from the only woman he has ever loved, the schoolteacher Spring Renfro.
Review
“The Smiling Country is a superb Kelton—a warm, nonviolent tale with captivating characters, a sweet love story, the flavor of a better time that has sadly passed.”—Rocky Mountain News
Review
"Kelton is a genuine craftsman with an ear for dialogue and, more importantly, an understanding of the human heart." --
Booklist"The Smiling Country is a superb Kelton--a warm, nonviolent tale with captivating characters, a sweet love story, the flavor of a better time that has sadly passed." --Rocky Mountain News
"You can never go wrong if you want to read a good story with realistic characters and you pick up a title by Elmer Kelton. In the case of his newest book, The Smiling Country, the guarantee is as good as gold....Kelton's characters jump off the page, they are so real. This is another fine title from the man named the Greatest Western Writer of All Time in a 1995 survey by the Western Writers of America." --America Cowboy
Synopsis
The cowboy-hero of Kelton's The Good Old Boys nearly dies before being reunited with the only woman he ever loved
It is 1910 and Hewey Calloway, the footloose cowboy of Elmer Kelton's unforgettable The Good Old Boys, is facing a great crisis: Forces he can't control are interrupting his freewheeling life in the "Smiling Country" of West Texas. Fences, trucks, and automobiles -- all things Hewey hates -- are ruining the landscape, and another thing he has never had or wanted, "responsibility", seems to be dogging his footsteps.
Hewey, a dinosaur of the open range, tries to adjust to technology and assess his future even as he is haunted by his decision, four years ago, to run away from Spring Renfro, the only woman he ever loved.
Synopsis
Twenty years ago, in
The Good Old Boys, Elmer Kelton introduced one of the most beloved characters in Western fiction, the Texas cowboy Hewey Calloway.
Hewey returns in The Smiling Country. It is now 1910 and his freewheeling life is coming to an end--the fences, trucks, and automobiles he hates are creeping in even to remote Alpine, in the "smiling country" of West Texas. When he is badly injured trying to break a renegade horse, he thinks for the first time of his future and sees the loneliness that awaits him, and regrets his decision to run away from the only woman he had ever loved, the schoolteacher Spring Renfro.
The Smiling Country is filled with humor, love, and the lore of the cowboy life at a time when the great, free, open ranges of the West were adjusting to a new, technological era. It is destined to stand, as so many Kelton books have, among the great Western novels of all time.
About the Author
Elmer Kelton, author of more than forty novels, grew up on a ranch near Crane, Texas, and earned a journalism degree from the University of Texas. His first novel,
Hot Iron, was published in 1956. For forty-two years he had a parallel career in agricultural journalism.
Among his awards have been seven Spurs from Western Writers of America and four Western Heritage awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. Among his best-known works have been The Time It Never Rained and The Good Old Boys, the latter made into a television film starring Tommy Lee Jones.
He served in the infantry in World War II. He and his wife, Ann, a native of Austria, live in San Angelo, Texas. They have three children, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.