A classic western by Max Brand, a master of the genre.
This premium quality large print edition contains the unabridged original classic version of Max Brand's western novel, "Riders of the Silences" in a large 7.44"x9.69" format, printed on heavyweight 60# bright white paper, with a fully laminated full-color cover featuring an original design. Also included is a brief original introductory author biography discussing the life and work of Max Brand.
"Riders of the Silences..."
.".. The Great West, prior to the century's turn, abounded in legend. Stories were told of fabled gunmen whose bullets always magically found their mark, of mighty stallions whose tireless gallop rivaled the speed of the wind, of glorious women whose beauty stunned mind and heart. But nowhere in the vast spread of the mountain-desert country was there a greater legend told than the story of Red Pierre and the phantom gunfighter, McGurk.
These two men of the wilderness, so unalike, of widely-differing backgrounds, had in common a single trait: each was unbeatable. Fate brought them clashing together, thunder to thunder, lightning to lightning. They were destined to meet at the crossroads of a long, long trail ... a trail which began in the northern wastes of Canada and led, finally, to a deadly confrontation in the mountains of the Far West..."
Max Brand's westerns introduced characters and story elements that not only appeared in subsequent novels by Brand but became archetypes for the western genre so successful in popular reading, film and television for decades.
Max Brand brought a more literary and serious approach to the western than did many others who worked in the genre, and while "Riders of the Silences" includes all those elements a reader expects in a western--gunplay, posses, horseback chases--in the characteristic action-packed style of Brand's many stories, it is also a well-plotted and thoughtful novel. While the modern reader will almost certainly recognize certain cliches of the western genre, it is worth noting that many of them "became" cliches long after Max Brand introduced them, as a result of countless others imitating Brand's originals.
"Max Brand..."
"Max Brand" is the best-known of many pen names used by Frederick Schiller Faust (1892-1944), an incredibly prolific American author known today primarily for his many western novels and as the creator of the cowboy-hero "Destry" and the character "Dr. Kildare." Born in Seattle, his parents both died while Faust was still a boy and he grew up with relatives in central California, eventually working for a time as a cowhand on a ranch in the San Joaquin Valley.
By the 1920s Faust was writing extensively for pulp magazines under multiple pen names, sometimes being the actual author of two serials and a short novel published in a single issue. By 1934 Faust was writing for more upscale magazines and had moved his family to a villa in Italy, but in 1938 he returned with his family to the United States and settled in Hollywood, working as a screenwriter for a number of film studios. He reaped a fortune from the "Dr. Kildare" films, and became one of the highest paid writers of the era. Despite his wealth and success, Faust used his real name only on his now-forgotten poetry, which he considered his true literary achievement.
One of the most prolific authors of all time, he wrote more than 500 novels and an almost equal number of shorter stories. Working at a breakneck pace, sometimes writing as much as 12,000 words in a weekend, most of his work was published with little or no editing or revision by either Faust or his publishers.
Despite his age and heart condition, Faust managed to talk his way into an assignment as a front line war correspondent and was mortally wounded by shrapnel while with American troops in Italy in 1944.