Welcome To Hard Times

 Welcome To Hard Times was the first book E. L. Doctorow wrote. He had a job as an editor in New York City. He saw the poor quality of the many western book that we published and thought he could do better. So he did. Even though he lived an urban life he wrote a cowboy story. This is set in Dakota Territory a few years after the civil war. The town of Hard Times has a windmill, a saloon, a store, and a stable. The wagon train comes by once in a while and the town is set close enough to a gold mine that the miners come to town on weekends. One day a man from Bodie comes to visit. The man from Bodie is a psychopath. He pillages, rapes and murders. On top of that he sets the buildings on fire before leaving.  One of the men in the town, Blue, (played by Henry Fonda in the movie version) rescues an injured woman named Molly and the newly orphaned boy Jim. He tries to rebuild the town. Eventually the town gets fairly close to normal. Molly wants revenge on the man from Bodie. Molly poisons the mind of the young Jim and calls Blue a coward. The movie version stays mostly true to the book except for the ending. In the book the author makes the point that life is fragile and unfair. In the movie we have a mostly happy ending. I can see why Hollywood declined to produce such a depressing and dismal story. E. L. Doctorow hated the movie and called it "The second worst movie ever made." I enjoy western books and I enjoyed this one. The movie was good too. Henry Fonda was a great actor.