The Orphan

Hopalong Cassidy #2

by Clarence Edward Mulford

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Westerns

279 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 24, 2011

About the author

Clarence Edward Mulford was the author of Hopalong Cassidy, written in 1904. He wrote it in Fryeburg, Maine, United States, and the many stories and 28 novels were followed by radio, feature film, television, and comic book versions. Clarence was born in Streator, Illinois. He died of complications from surgery in Portland, Maine. He set aside much of his money from his book for local charities.

Reviews

[Mh430 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Several online sources say this is the second novel in the Hopalong Cassidy series. But it isn't. Cassidy never appears here, or is even mentioned in passing. I read the first Hopalong book (Bar-20) quite a while ago and perhaps some supporting character from that novel appears here as well. Maybe. What I can say for certain is that this book isn't nearly as good as I remember Bar-20 being. Although written four years later this work somehow seems more dated, unforgivably so in some ways. It's quaintly amusing for the expletives in the book to be written out as "h--l" and "d--n," but having characters constantly praise each other with the honorific "white" gets tiresome very quickly. As for the ostensible comic relief scenes, I found them to be a, too frequent, and b, not very funny.
Things aren't all bad here, of course. I liked the two leads - an aging, worldly-wise law man named Jim Shields and the deadly young gunman with a cause they call the Orphan - just fine. And Mulford does a good job with some of the (Texas?) landscape descriptions too, even if he was born, raised, and resided most of his life in the very unwestern state of Maine. He can handle action effectively as well, which is certainly a big plus in this kind of story. Whether those pluses can redeem this novel will be up to the individual reader.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

If one is simply not interested or comfortable reading old literature that contains "racist" attitudes and words, such as in The Merchant of Venice and here in The Orphan, then you don't want to read this book. When written, "your are the whitest person" was presumably intended by some as a compliment because of racist attitudes toward African-Americans, and the phrase is repeatedly used in this book. Native Americans are also portrayed as ruthless and terrifying in the form of Apache raiding parties. So stay away.

If, one the other hand, one can suspend disgust for the length of a novel, then this is a remarkable portrait of what could be good in people when they work together and open their hearts to someone new and are filled up with gratitude and open to change. In that context, it's moving. yes really. I read it when I was feeling sick of the news, and this actually felt uplifting.

Obviously, the characters are so open solely to certain races of people. Others need not apply.

Here's an interesting poetic approach to the quandary: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/t...

a list of "non-colonial" westerns: https://bookriot.com/westerns-that-de...

[Patricia]

Bought this as part of a set. It isn't Hoppie, but it was terrific. I couldn't put it down! About three quarters of the way thru, the author restates the story from a different characters perspective, catching you up from all angles. The picture this story puts in your head is terrific. The phrase "all right, all right, all right began here! In 1911!
The language sound exactly the way my grandpa talked and reaffirms what he meant by the term "white man" before terms of black and white became only about race but we're instead about white hats and black hats ( good men vs bad men) and it clarifies exactly what makes a good man good and a bad man bad. It was wonderful.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well written Western.

This is a well written book. The tail was a truer story than a lot of other books I’ve read. The characters all had life that they displayed with a lot of energy. The dead ending was a surprise I didn’t expect. I’ve only read part of one other book by this author and I didn’t like it. I almost didn’t read this one. Read and enjoy.

[H Jesseman · Rating 3 out of 5]

It got rather sentimental towards the end.

[Joseph Loehr · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fine Shoot-em-up