Best 1906 Adventures (6)
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October 27, 2016
One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1906 adventure novels. Happy 110th anniversary!
B.M. Bower’s Western story Chip of the Flying U.
This is a charming Western — romantic, humorous, easy-going, authentic in its details — but perhaps not exactly an adventure. Oh, well — you can’t have everything. Here we first meet the “happy family” of cowboys at Montana’s Flying U ranch. Chip is a gifted artist, who comes into conflict with Della Whitmore, a self-reliant doctor from back East — who “can shoot a coyote, laugh off a hazing, doctor a horse, and turn cowboys into pediatric orderlies’ — when she takes credit for one of his paintings. Later, she credits him for the work… and he saves her from a runaway horse. Della is a tough cookie, who introduces herself by shooting a marauding coyote. Chip falls in love with her, but he doesn’t realize it for a while. Della fixes his horse’s leg when he thought he’d have to shoot it, though…
Fun fact: Prolific writer Bertha Muzzy Bower, who grew up in Montana’s Big Sandy region, was the first woman to gain national fame as the author of Western stories. Chip of the Flying U was first serialized in 1904, in Popular Magazine. It was adapted as a movie four times, one starring Tom Mix and another Hoot Gibson.
Let me know if I’ve missed any 1906 adventures that you particularly admire.