The Westward Star

New York: The John Day Company. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. (c.1934). First Edition. Hardcover. [good sound copy, a bit of wear to lower extremities, light dust-soiling to top of text block, vintage bookseller's label (Buccaneer Books, Long Beach, California) on front pastedown; the jacket has a shallow jagged chip at the lower left of the front panel, extending slightly into the spine, is somewhat age-toned along the spine, and has a handful of internal tape-mends along the top and bottom edges]. A narrative poem -- a historical novel in verse -- backgrounded against the "conquering of the trans-Mississippi West." "We are in the vastness of the prairie. It is 1847; the twisting line of white-topped wagons crawls toward the Pacific. We move with them across the continent through river flood and desert, across grassed plateau and granite mountain. Wagons and oxen crumble. Men struggle and love, despair and hate, murder, starve, and eat the flesh of the dead." The author (1888-1969) was at various times of his life a newspaperman, college professor, aviator, author, poet, and industrial historian. .