The Honyocker

by Giles A. Lutz

Winner of the 1962 Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award for best novel. "Ashel Backus could stay a honyocker all his life and starve trying to cultivate his scrubby plot of land, or he could pick up wages working for the despised cattlemen and become a traitor to his people."

Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Giles Alfred Lutz (March 1910–June 1982) was a prolific author of fiction in the Western genre. Born in 9 March 1910 in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, Lutz for many years wrote short stories about the American West that were published in pulp magazines. His story "Get a Wild Horse Hunter," an example of his pulp fiction writing, appeared in the June 1952 edition of the magazine Western Novels and Short Stories. In the mid-1950s Lutz made the transition to full-length novels, and until his death in June 1982, published numerous stories about the American West. In 1962, Lutz won the Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award for his novel, The Honyocker.

Lutz wrote under several pseudonyms during his pulp fiction career, including under the names: " James B. Chaffin," " Wade Everett (with Will Cook)," " Alex Hawk," "Hunter," " Hunter Ingram," " Reese Sullivan," and " Gene Thompson." Under the pseudonym " Brad Curtis," Lutz wrote steamy pulp novels in the erotica genre. He also wrote a lot of sports fiction for the pulp magazines, in titles like Ace Sports, Complete Sports, and Football Stories.

Reviews

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Honyocker” was an insulting term bestowed by cattlemen and cowboys on homesteaders in the far West, who attempted to make a living from subsistence farming on what had at one time been open range. Turning the prairie sod, they were destroying not only free grass for the ranchers. Unknown to them, they were also permanently disturbing a fragile ecology too arid for cultivation of dryland crops that would support a family of settlers.

Lutz builds his story around such a family, the Backuses, who have migrated to Montana from Missouri. Years of crop failures and an aversion to hard work have left them poverty stricken and desperate. The central character, Ashel Backus, is the one honorable son among three who tries to keep his brothers from stealing to put food on the table. Discovering that they have butchered a steer taken from the herd of a neighboring rancher, Milo Vaughan, Ashel offers to pay for the animal by working off the debt, and Vaughan agrees to hire him for a month of odd jobs around the ranch...

More at my blog.

[Mark Pasquini · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great low-key western with humanity. Nesters vs. Cattlemen. Highly recommended for those interested in the genre.