For the last couple of months, in an attempt to escape the less than stellar european historicals that I keep picking up, I switched my focus to western romance. I've read well over 60+ and I've definitely found some favorites, but today I wanted to take a moment to spread the gospel of Garlock. Dorothy Garlock that is.
I've always been aware of Dorothy Garlock. She has been writing for a zillion years, I had enjoyed some of her work when I was younger. has a ton of books and a very loyal fan base. Lately it seems that she has sort of fallen out of favor, but thanks to her books being released for Kindle, I stumbled onto them and after I started reading them again, I was hooked! Now Dorothy writes in several different sub genres of romance. She does western/cowboy stories, Americana/farmer stories, frontiersman/trapper books and her latest books seem to all be set between the 1920s and 1940s in prototypical American small towns.
There is a line in one of my favorite Amy Winehouse songs that goes "what kind of fuckery is this.." and I admit that line ran through my head continuously as I read Garlock's book, Homeplace. Homeplace tells the story of Ana, a 26 year old widow who goes to the aid of her 17 year old stepdaughter, after the girl has run off and married a farmer. Her stepdaughter is pregnant and later dies while giving birth. Ana stays on to take care of the child and try and protect him from all of the bat shit crazy people who live in this small midwestern farming community. She eventually marries her son in law and that is one of the more normal aspects to the story. This book has it all. It's almost gothic in tone. There is madness, incest, murder, and enough illicit doings to make Rosemary Rogers blush! Needless to say, I was hooked!
I immediately glommed DG's considerable backlist and found tale after tale of dark, twisty goodness. Her books don't shy away from the grittiness that was inherent in the 18th and 19th century American west. Her characters get dirty, they spend a good bit of time figuring out ways to bathe, and I appreciated her addressing what is undoubtedly, a realistic aspect of life at the time. The sex is earthy and abundant. She spends a lot of time talking about food (which I love) and she even includes recipes for some of the more obscure dishes. While trying to analyze what appealed to me about Garlock's work, I suddenly realized that they were like the Little House series for adults. Many of the same elements that I adored in the Little House books when I was 10, I found in the Garlock books. An authentic portrayal of the challenges of life during that period. Talk of covered wagons, cooking over camp fires, moving west to find land, the difficulties of farming or settling in unsettled areas, all of these made the Little House books fascinating to me. I got all of that, plus romance, sex and violent action in the Garlock books. It was sort of a dream come true!
Now, before you run out to your local library and grab all the Garlock books off the shelf, be warned, her books are NOT AT ALL politically correct. Women have a pretty tough row to hoe in these books. This is undoubtedly historically accurate, but sometimes difficult to read. The books that she writes set around the Civil War feature stereotypical African-American characters that will definitely make you do some heavy duty eye-rolling. That said, African Americans tend to be portrayed positively in her work, as do Native Americans. Her heroes are men's men and tend to run from the slightly chauvinistic to the cave man type. With the occasional wince, I managed to overlook all of those drawbacks and enjoy the stories.
So, if you loved the Little House books as a kid, but always wondered how Caroline and Charles Ingalls managed to have so many kids when they were traveling in a covered wagon or sharing a one room farm house, if you've always wondered how do I make a decent biscuit or hoecake while fending off an overly amorous fur trapper, if you've ever asked yourself what really goes on inside a teepee, you'll probably enjoy Dorothy Garlock's books.
