Some impressive writing from Robert B. Parker

One thing I’ve been meaning to do for a while is post some impressive writing that I come across. You know, the kind that makes you go, wo-ah, and yank out an ink pen and start underlining.

These posts on great writing will come in no particular order, and just because this is first, doesn’t mean I’m saying it’s the best. But, a man’s got to start somewhere and I have no idea what the best passage I’ve ever read is anyway…

Anyway, here’s one from a couple of weeks ago that I had meant to post when I read it. It’s from Robert B. Parker’s book ”Night Passage.” This scene is of the main character, Jesse Stone, driving across the country to his new job, following his divorce. Thus, he’s nostalgic and thinking too much as he leaves California and heads east.

“It was impossible to drive across the country without imagining Indians and cavalry and wagon trains and mountain men, and Wells Fargo and the Union Pacific. Deerskin trousers and coats made of buffalo hide and long rifles and traps and whiskey and Indians. Bowie knives. Beaver traps. Buffalo as far as you could look. White-faced cattle. Chuck wagons. Six-guns with smooth handles. Horse and man seemingly like one animal as they moved across the landscape. Hats and kerchiefs and Winchester rifles and the creak of saddles and the smell of bacon and coffee.”

Keep the faith,

Stan R. Mitchell

Oak Ridge, Tenn.

P.S. If you enjoy fast-paced books, you just might like my works. “Sold Out” tracks the life of a legendary Marine Sniper after a CIA unit decides to kill him for reasons of national security. “Little Man, and the Dixon County War” tells the uphill fight a young deputy faces after surviving three years of war only to find himself in the sights of a mighty cattle baron. And “Soldier On,” a short novel, follows the lives of several German soldiers in a depleted infantry company trying to make it through the final, miserable months of World War II.