Actualities in the Southwest seem to have stifled fictional
creation. No historical novel dealing with Texas history has
achieved the drama of the fall of the Alamo or the drawing of
the black beans, has presented a character with half the
reality of Sam Houston, Jim Bowie, or Sallie Skull, or has
captured the flavor inherent in the talk on many a ranch
gallery.
Historical fiction dealing with early day Texas is, however,
distinctly maturing. As a dramatization of Jim Bowie and the
bowie knife, _The Iron Mistress_, by Paul Wellman (Doubleday,
Garden City, New York, 1951), is the best novel published so
far dealing with a figure of the Texas revolution. In _Divine
Average_ (Little, Brown, Boston, 1952), Elithe Hamilton
Kirkland weaves from her seasoned knowledge of life and from
"realities of those violent years in Texas history between
1838 and 1858" a story of human destiny. She reveals the
essential nature of Range Templeton more distinctly, more
mordantly, than history has revealed the essential nature of
Sam Houston or any of his contemporaries. The wife and
daughter of Range Templeton are the most plausible women in
any historical novel of Texas that I have read.
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