Lonely on the Mountain, part 3

Now, years later and far out on the grass prairie, I was remembering and wondering what I could do that I hadn't done.

No matter which way you looked between you and anywhere else, there was a thousand miles of grass--- and the Sioux.

The Sioux hadn't come upon us yet, but they were about, and every man-jack of us knew it. It could be they hadn't cut our sign yet, but cut it they would, and when they did, they would come for us.

Lonely on the Mountain
Louis L'Amour
1980

This is the third installment of the beginning of Lonely on the Mountain, a western by Louis L'Amour, one of the most popular of American writers.

At this point the first-person narrator, Tell Sackett, brings us from his memory of troubled times of the past to the troubles of the present. He's out on the prairie--- we later learn his mission is to drive a herd of cattle to another Sackett in Canada--- and he is going through Sioux Indian territory--- and the Sioux are not feeling peaceable.

Putting the three sections of the beginning together, what most impresses me is the strong voice of his character. This is essential when you are using a first-person narrator. Such a narrator must show forth his personality and his individuality in the way he speaks. A bland first-person narrator just will not do.

Another interesting thing about 'Lonely on the Mountain'. The first section is first-person POV will Tell Sackett as the POV character. The next section is third-person POV with another member of the Sackett family as the POV character. He keeps hearing that Tell and the others on the cattle drive were killed by Indians. Later in the novel when Tell Sackett is found, we return to his first-person POV.

While this is not a common way of handling point-of-view in a novel, it works very well. Of course, L'Amour was a very experienced writer when he did it.

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Lonely on the Mountain, part 2

 Two years before, pa had set us to diggin' a well. "Pa?" I asked. "Why dig a well? We've got the creek yonder and three flowin' springs on the place. It's needless work."

He lifted his head, and he looked me right in the eye and said, "Dig a well."

We dug a well.

We grumbled, but when pa said dig, you just naturally dug. And lucky it was, too.

For there came a time when the bed of the creek was dust and the springs that had always flowed weren't flowin'. We had water, though. We had water from a deep, cold well. We watered our stock, we watered our kitchen garden, and we had what was needful for drinkin' because of that well.

*~*~*

Lonely on the Mountain
by Louis L'Amour
1980

This is the second installment of the beginning of this novel. L'Amour has his first-person narrator, Tell Sackett, give us a short word-picture of an incident from his boyhood. It shows what kind of person Pa Sackett was, which explains a lot about how Tell and the other Sackett brothers turned out.

This mini-flashback is risky at the beginning of a novel. L'Amour was at that time a very experienced writer. His first novel was published about 1950. The first book in the Sackett series was published in 1960, so he also had fans eager to hear some Sackett backstory.

But I think even if this had been the first Sackett book, this mini-flashback would have worked. In the voice of the first-person narrator, this mini-flashback is in a way a short description of the character--- not of his looks, but of who he was as a person.

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Lonely on the Mountain, part 1

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

Pa said that when I was a boy. There was a hot, dry wind moaning through the hot, dry trees, and we were scared of fire in the woods, knowing that if fire came, all we had would go.

We had crops in the ground, but there'd been no rain for weeks. We were scrapin' the bottom of the barrel for flour and drinkin' coffee made from ground-up beans. We' had our best cow die, and the rest was ganted up, so's you could count every rib.

from
Lonely on the Mountain
Louis L'Amour
published 1980

I've been doing a writing exercise that involves copying out about 300 words of the beginning of novels. This is the first 1/3 of the portion that I copied.

Louis L'Amour had a series, the Sackett series. The first book in that series was written in 1960. This one came along 20 years later. By this time Louis L'Amour was one of the most popular writers in the country. His skill with words can be seen here.

I found this section to be a very powerful opening, which I used for a model in my own WIP. The main character is William Tell Sackett, called Tell. He is featured in several of the Sackett novels and is a character I love.

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