WorldCat Linked Data Explorer

Turtle N-Triple JSON-LD RDF/XML HTML Contact Us Home

http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/48094396

Telegraph days

Remember those old Frontier tales, told by the campfire--stories of Billy the Kid, Wild Bill and Wyatt Earp? Larry McMurtry's new novel brings back the lore and lure of those winsome Western yarns with an array of colorful characters and a galloping story. After disease and hardship take the lives of the Courtright family, save for Nellie and her teenaged brother, Jackson, the determined young woman moves to Rita Blanca. Tragedy soon turns into triumph when Jackson becomes a deputy and Nellie takes over the abandoned telegraph. when the ill-reputed Yazee brothers gallop into town, guns firing, the young Jackson shoots the six outlaws dead and becomes a folk hero for years to come. Nellie herself finds celebrity when she catches the eye of many of Old West legend, including Wild Bill Hickok, George Custer, Virgil Earp and more.

Open All Close All

type

about

http://schema.org/about

contributor

creator

description

http://schema.org/description

  • "Remember those old Frontier tales, told by the campfire--stories of Billy the Kid, Wild Bill and Wyatt Earp? Larry McMurtry's new novel brings back the lore and lure of those winsome Western yarns with an array of colorful characters and a galloping story. After disease and hardship take the lives of the Courtright family, save for Nellie and her teenaged brother, Jackson, the determined young woman moves to Rita Blanca. Tragedy soon turns into triumph when Jackson becomes a deputy and Nellie takes over the abandoned telegraph. when the ill-reputed Yazee brothers gallop into town, guns firing, the young Jackson shoots the six outlaws dead and becomes a folk hero for years to come. Nellie herself finds celebrity when she catches the eye of many of Old West legend, including Wild Bill Hickok, George Custer, Virgil Earp and more."@en
  • "Remember those old Frontier tales, told by the campfire--stories of Billy the Kid, Wild Bill and Wyatt Earp? Larry McMurtry's new novel brings back the lore and lure of those winsome Western yarns with an array of colorful characters and a galloping story. After disease and hardship take the lives of the Courtright family, save for Nellie and her teenaged brother, Jackson, the determined young woman moves to Rita Blanca. Tragedy soon turns into triumph when Jackson becomes a deputy and Nellie takes over the abandoned telegraph. when the ill-reputed Yazee brothers gallop into town, guns firing, the young Jackson shoots the six outlaws dead and becomes a folk hero for years to come. Nellie herself finds celebrity when she catches the eye of many of Old West legend, including Wild Bill Hickok, George Custer, Virgil Earp and more."
  • "After disease and hardship take the lives of the Courtright family, save for Nellie and her teenaged brother, Jackson, the determined young woman moves to Rita Blanca. Tragedy soon turns into triumph when Jackson becomes a deputy and Nellie takes over the abandoned telegraph. When the ill-reputed Yzaee brothers gallop into town, guns firing, the young Jackson shoots the six outlaws dead and becomes a folk hero for years to come. Nellie herself finds celebrity when she catches the eye of many an Old West legend, including Wild Bill Hickok, Georege, Virgil Earp and more."
  • "Recounts myths of the closing decades of the western frontier viewed through the eyes of Nellie Courtright and her brother Jackson, orphans that make good in the town of Rita Blanca in what would become the Oklahoma Panhandle."@en
  • "Recounts myths of the closing decades of the western frontier viewed through the eyes of Nellie Courtright and her brother Jackson, orphans that make good in the town of Rita Blanca in what would become the Oklahoma Panhandle."
  • "With Telegraph Days, the prolific Texas writer of fiction and nonfiction, who also won an Academy Award for the script of "Brokeback Mountain," has done a bit of backsliding. Telegraph Days is no Pulitzer contender, but it's still a darn good read: an entertaining spoof about the Wild West that brings alive the romance of outlaws, gunfighters and shootouts. McMurtry parts with the real West right there, of course. Dying in the West was no more romantic than dying anywhere else. The real West was a sober place, peopled by fortune hunters, psychopaths, charlatans and a few decent people. But how much fun is that? In Telegraph Days, McMurtry puts aside the history of greed and conquest to recreate the West of the dime novels and Wild West shows, the land of bigger-than-life characters -- an era more Cat Ballou than Clint Eastwood. The heroine is Nellie Courtright, a very forward young lady -- actually, a bit of a slut. (She's already canoodled with Wild Bill Hickok and George Custer.) In her own words, she's "twenty-two, kissable, and of an independent disposition." Nellie and her brother Jackson, 17, are orphaned after their father "hung himself to death." This is not an introspective book, so we're not sure why their father committed suicide, but the deaths of a wife, six children and various servants in the days since they all left Virginia for a better life in the Cimarron country might have had something to do with it. Besides, death is no stranger in Texas. When a neighbor hears of their father's demise, he says, "Damnit! I expect you'd welcome breakfast." The orphans spend little time mourning. Instead, they rush off to the nearest town, Rita Blanca, where Nellie convinces the sheriff, one of her paramours, to make her brother a deputy. Nellie takes over the telegraph office. Jackson has barely strapped on his gun before the six dreaded Yazee brothers ride into town, murder the sheriff and are about to club Nellie and Jackson. When Nellie commands her brother to shoot, he fires six bullets, each one striking the heart of a Yazee. "That makes you the biggest hero in the whole West!" Nellie tells him. Journalists and others, including Buffalo Bill Cody, descend on Rita Blanca to interview the boy-hero. The showman wants to hire Jackson, but the boy's shooting luck has deserted him, so Cody employs Nellie to oversee his far-flung investments. From there her adventures continue, to Tombstone and the OK Corral and eventually out to Hollywood, where the Old West is celebrated and romanticized on the new silver screen. "Once is enough to live your life through, ain't it?" a friend asks toward the end of the book. Nellie agrees. After all, who could live that life twice? With Telegraph Days, McMurtry has created a modern-day dime novel, a romantic knock-up of the West -- proof that an old-fashioned oater can be as much fun to read as a literary work."@en
  • "Orphaned by her father's suicide, Nellie and her brother, Jackson, take jobs in the western town of Rita Blanca, where deputy sheriff Jackson is forced to confront six gunfighter brothers and telegrapher Nellie pursues a romance with Buffalo Bill."
  • "Orphaned by her father's suicide, Nellie and her brother, Jackson, take jobs in the western town of Rita Blanca, where deputy sheriff Jackson is forced to confront six gunfighter brothers and telegrapher Nellie pursues a romance with Buffalo Bill."@en
  • ""Told in the voice of Nellie Courtright, a spunky, courageous, attractive young woman whose story this is in part, Telegraph Days is the big novel of the Western gunfighters that people have been hoping for years Larry McMurtry would write." "When Nellie and her brother Jackson are unexpectedly orphaned by their father's suicide on his new and unprosperous ranch, they make their way to the nearby town of Rita Blanca, where Jackson manages to secure a job as a sheriff's deputy, while Nellie, ever resourceful, becomes the town's telegrapher." "Together, they inadvertently put Rita Blanca on the map when young Jackson succeeds in shooting down all six of the ferocious Yazee brothers in a gunfight that brings him lifelong fame but which he can never repeat because his success came purely out of luck." "Propelled by her own energy and common-sense approach to life, Nellie meets and almost conquers the heart of Buffalo Bill, the man she will love most in her long life, and goes on to meet, and witness the exploits of, Billy the Kid, the Earp brothers, and Doc Holliday. She even gets a ringside seat at the Battle at the O.K. Corral, the most famous gunfight in Western history, and eventually lives long enough to see the West and its gunfighters turned into movies."--Jacket."@en
  • "Another big, brilliant, unputdownable saga of the West from Larry McMurtry told in the voice of Nellie Courtright, a spunky, courageous, attractive young woman. When Nellie and her brother Jackson are unexpectedly orphaned by their father's suicide, they make their way to the nearby town of Rita Blanca, where Jackson manages to secure a job as a sheriff's deputy, while Nellie, ever resourceful, becomes the town's telegrapher. Propelled by her own energy and commonsense approach to life, Nellie meets and almost conquers the heart of Buffalo Bill, the man she will love most in her long life, and goes on to meet, and witness the exploits of, Billy the Kid, the Earp brothers, and Doc Holliday."
  • "Recounts myths of the closing decades of the western frontier viewed through the eyes of Nellie Courtright and her brother Jackson, orphans who make good in the town of Rita Blanca in what would become the Oklahoma Panhandle."@en
  • "Recounts myths of the closing decades of the western frontier viewed through the eyes of Nellie Courtright and her brother, Jackson, orphans that make good in the town of Rita Blanca in what would become the Oklahoma Panhandle."@en

genre

http://schema.org/genre

  • "Western"
  • "Western"@en
  • "Fiction"@en
  • "Fiction"
  • "Historical fiction, American"
  • "Electronic books"@en
  • "Large type books"@en
  • "Western stories"@en
  • "Western stories"

name

http://schema.org/name

  • "Telegraph days"
  • "Telegraph days"@en
  • "Telegraph Days"@en
  • "Telegraph Days"
  • "Telegraph Days : a novel"
  • "Telegraph Days : a novel"@en
  • "TELEGRAPH DAYS. WESTERN"
  • "Telegraph days : a novel"
  • "Telegraph days : a novel"@en
  • "Telegraph days Larry McMurty"

workExample