The Bad Lands A Novel

Oakley Hall (1920-2008) was considered a great novelist of the American West, and as an inspiring writing teacher whose students include Amy Tan, Michael Chabon, and Richard Ford. The Bad Lands (Atheneum, 1978) is set in1883 in the Dakota Territory. It describes the closing of the open lands there, the end of the Beef Bonanza, and conflicts among ranchers. It blends action-packed western tropes (cattle round-ups, rustlers, the threat of hangings, much shooting, and a whore house) with an elegy to the wild beauty of the Bad Lands before cattle ranchers chased off the Native Americans and fenced it in."