The Silver Desert

by Ernest Haycox
Category: "Fiction - Western"
Pages:224
Year of Publication:1935
Date Added:06/01/2025
Date Read:08/06/2025
Notes:Lily Tennant has finally made it in Hollywood, and the studio is ready to begin shooting her first big picture. But Lily isn't sure she wants that life, so she heads to Reno for a break. She meets Tom Sebastian, owner of a huge ranch, and they are immediately attracted to each other. Tom invites her and a few of her film friends to the ranch. A local businessman who feuded with Tom's father has decided to destroy Tom and the ranch. He's hired a bunch of thugs who attack the ranch hands and the cattle constantly. While Tom fights off the attacks, he and Lily decide they love each other. But there's a snag. Charm, a young woman with a son lives on Tom's ranch, and although Tom isn't the father, he feels responsible for her. When the real father, one of the thugs, is killed. Tom proposes to Charm. But she realizes he really loves Lily and turns him down. Lily decides to chuck Hollywood and marry Tom.
My Rating: 5

Reviews for The Silver Desert

Review - Silver Desert, The

Really the first Haycox novel I really haven't liked. The mix of Hollywood glamour with Wild West just didn't work. Besides the usual problems of people falling in love almost instantly, I had a problem with the gunslinger, shoot-'em-up action which supposedly took place in the 1930s with no consequences to those doing the shooting. And the thing that bothered me most—pretty much every time Tom leaves the ranch, somebody shoots at him. But he never hesitates to take Lily along with him. At one point, she sat in the car in front of a saloon while he went inside and shot it out with three men. Why would any woman marry a man who risked her, and his own, life that way?

Reviewed by Roger on 2025-08-06 08:43:49

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