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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 15, 2015)
BOOK REVIEW Change the way you watch old Hollywood westerns Read ‘Falling from Horses’ by Portland author Molly Gloss Y You might not love horses. You may not know a cowboy. That doesn’t mat- ter. “Falling from Horses,” Portland writer Molly Gloss’s most recent novel, will make you care for horses at least enough to see if the terrible things they once did to them in the movies might actually have happened. They did. Gloss has done some meticulous research. It’s 1938. Bud Frazer, nursing a small calf-roping purse from the Chil- oquin Roundup and a small wad from the sale of his saddle, buys a Greyhound bus ticket for Hollywood aiming to ride in the movies. In Eastern Oregon he leaves behind his good folks, who earn a hard living working others’ ranches. The cherished memories of his younger sister, though, Mary Claudine, killed a couple years back in a ranch accident, accompany him. As the high desert rolls by at a pre-in- terstate pace, Bud makes friends with another adventurer, Lily Shaw, “fearless and too smart by half,” says Bud. Lily is leaving the women’s pages of the Se- attle Times and head- ing to Hollywood, too, determined to become a screen- writer. They enjoy an unusual friendship as each navigates the deceptive and sometimes-danger- ous culture they’re determined, for their own reasons, each to tackle. Except for a cou- ple of villains, Gloss’s characters are mostly good people, accustomed to hardship, who keep their emotional cards close to their chests. Bud narrates a lot of the story looking back from across the years. He’s thoughtful, observant and friendly in the easy, some- times laconic way of a lot of ranch hands. Sometimes, as when he de- scribes north- ern California — “suddenly there was Shas- ta, as big as you please, a white ice cream cone of a mountain, like the ones kids draw even if they’ve never seen such a thing” — he reminds a read- er a little of Huck Finn. Gloss interrupts Bud’s tale with nar- rative describing the hard circumstances of his family’s work on marginal small ranch- es in Eastern Oregon. Equipment breaks down, lightning kills horses, an accident hobbles Bud’s father, his mother soldiers on. Bud and his pre- cocious sister Mary Claudine, under their parents’ progres- sive guidance, enjoy the broadest of educations. Then, on a gather, Mary Except for a couple of villains, Gloss’s characters are mostly good people, accustomed to hardship, who keep their emotional cards close to their chests. 8 | January 15, 2015 | coastweekend.com Claudine dis- appears. Bud, resum- ing his story, encounters a variety of curi- ous Hollywood wranglers, gradually finding some success rid- ing stunts in the movies. The terrible horse wrecks he experienc- es, though, ul- timately catch up with him. Sort of like he had hoped. When, near the story’s end, his dad asks if Holly- wood wasn’t pretty hard on horses, Bud, before replying, remembers how horses were treated well on ranches. Then to himself he thinks, “In the movies, though, you couldn’t watch a cowboy picture without seeing hors- es used in terrible ways, whipped and spurred by stage drivers, by posses and outlaw bands, ridden hard up and down steep ravines, through flooding rivers, into deserts or snowstorms without food or shelter. They were always being jumped through plate-glass windows or trapped in burning barns, caught in the middle of gunfights, and shot at, wounded, killed, by just about every- body in the picture — good guys, bad guys, cavalry, Indians. Ridden hell-for- leather until they staggered and dropped dead on the ground.” Then Bud simply says to his dad, “Yeah, they’re hell on horses.” Rooted in place, in time, in commu- nity, Molly Gloss’s characters are genu- ine. A reader cares about them. She de- scribes a fistfight like she’s been in one or two herself and 1930s Los Angeles like she lived there. Her research into the trip wires and tilt chutes that sent horses falling, her description of stunts and the tricks riders use to survive them mostly, will change the way you watch old Hollywood westerns. the arts VISUAL ARTS • LITERATURE • THEATER • MUSIC & MORE Story by JON BRODERICK
