What do you think?
Rate this book
The Valdez Horses
Winner of Best Western novel. 1st print 1967.pages tanning. has been in storage. ships 1st class + tracking. Rare find!
- GenresWesterns
193 pages, Paperback
First published May 15, 1967
About the author
Lee Hoffman
57 books4 followersAlso published books under the name Georgia York
"My mother was born in High Springs, Florida in 1899, my father in Frankford, Pennsylvania in 1898, and my brother in Savannah, Georgia in 1922. I was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1932, shortly before the end of the Hoover administration.
By 1938 my parents had decide to relocate. They liked Lake Worth, Florida, the very small town where my mother's folks were living at the time. Taking me along, my mother went to Lake Worth to try to set up in the tourist business. My Dad had a job in a radio factory in Chicago. Since this was during The Great Depression and he didn't want to take any chances, he stayed there to collect a regular salary while my mother got the business established. My brother, then in high school, stayed with him to finish the school term before he came south.
My mother rented a large rooming house on the federal highway and hung out her shingle, but her timing was bad. That winter there was record cold. The tourists went further south, or back to their fireplaces and furnaces in the north. The next winter she rented a smaller place, but the same thing happened. Even so, my father left his job and joined us.
Things looked so unpromising in Florida that they decided to go to Savannah. That's where they'd met and married and built a small house. They still owned the house so they figured whatever happened, they'd have a roof over their heads. We arrived in the fall of 1940. My father landed a job as a radio repairman. Based on past experience, I figured we'd be moving again before long but we didn't. My parents settled in and stayed for the next twenty five years.
I'd done my first two years of grammar school in Florida. I got the rest of my formal education in Savannah. After I finished high school, I went to the local junior college. In grammar school, my ambition had been to become a cowgirl. In high school I decided I wanted to follow in the family footsteps and become a radio technician. In college, I got involved in the local theater scene, and wanted to do that for a living. By the time I graduated in 1951, I didn't know what I wanted to do.
My brother had gone into the Air Corps in WWII, had been stationed in England and had come home with a bride from London. He apprenticed to my father under the GI Bill. By the time I got out of college, they were partners planning to open their own radio & TV service business. I didn't yet realize it, but I was fated to work in the store for them until I left home.
My job was minding the counter, answering the phone and doing clerical work. Much of my time in the store was spent waiting for something to happen. With all that time to kill, I read a lot. When I got tired of that, I amused myself by writing my own books. Although I was an avid science-fiction fan, it was the western that came most naturally to me. I'd finish one and send it to be read by an out-of-town friend who liked westerns. Once I sent one to another friend who'd made some book sales. He thought it was salable and told me to send it to his agent. It bounced back without a word. I decided I was not ready to become a professional author. I was right. Years later, I looked back at those manuscripts and was glad so few people had ever seen them.
While still in college, I got into science-fiction fandom. I did some amateur (fanzine) publishing and went to several conventions. After I started working, I began spending my vacations on cattle ranches instead. Then in the fall of 1955 I decided to go to the World Science-Fiction Convention in Cleveland. That's where I met Larry Shaw, editor of the new science-fiction magazine, Infinity.
Larry and I spent much of the convention together and began a rapid-fire exchange of letters afterward. In one of them, he proposed marriage. I accepted. He came to Savannah to meet my folks and in the spring of 1956, I went to New York to get married. In retrospect, I think we were a little hasty. In 19
"My mother was born in High Springs, Florida in 1899, my father in Frankford, Pennsylvania in 1898, and my brother in Savannah, Georgia in 1922. I was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1932, shortly before the end of the Hoover administration.
By 1938 my parents had decide to relocate. They liked Lake Worth, Florida, the very small town where my mother's folks were living at the time. Taking me along, my mother went to Lake Worth to try to set up in the tourist business. My Dad had a job in a radio factory in Chicago. Since this was during The Great Depression and he didn't want to take any chances, he stayed there to collect a regular salary while my mother got the business established. My brother, then in high school, stayed with him to finish the school term before he came south.
My mother rented a large rooming house on the federal highway and hung out her shingle, but her timing was bad. That winter there was record cold. The tourists went further south, or back to their fireplaces and furnaces in the north. The next winter she rented a smaller place, but the same thing happened. Even so, my father left his job and joined us.
Things looked so unpromising in Florida that they decided to go to Savannah. That's where they'd met and married and built a small house. They still owned the house so they figured whatever happened, they'd have a roof over their heads. We arrived in the fall of 1940. My father landed a job as a radio repairman. Based on past experience, I figured we'd be moving again before long but we didn't. My parents settled in and stayed for the next twenty five years.
I'd done my first two years of grammar school in Florida. I got the rest of my formal education in Savannah. After I finished high school, I went to the local junior college. In grammar school, my ambition had been to become a cowgirl. In high school I decided I wanted to follow in the family footsteps and become a radio technician. In college, I got involved in the local theater scene, and wanted to do that for a living. By the time I graduated in 1951, I didn't know what I wanted to do.
My brother had gone into the Air Corps in WWII, had been stationed in England and had come home with a bride from London. He apprenticed to my father under the GI Bill. By the time I got out of college, they were partners planning to open their own radio & TV service business. I didn't yet realize it, but I was fated to work in the store for them until I left home.
My job was minding the counter, answering the phone and doing clerical work. Much of my time in the store was spent waiting for something to happen. With all that time to kill, I read a lot. When I got tired of that, I amused myself by writing my own books. Although I was an avid science-fiction fan, it was the western that came most naturally to me. I'd finish one and send it to be read by an out-of-town friend who liked westerns. Once I sent one to another friend who'd made some book sales. He thought it was salable and told me to send it to his agent. It bounced back without a word. I decided I was not ready to become a professional author. I was right. Years later, I looked back at those manuscripts and was glad so few people had ever seen them.
While still in college, I got into science-fiction fandom. I did some amateur (fanzine) publishing and went to several conventions. After I started working, I began spending my vacations on cattle ranches instead. Then in the fall of 1955 I decided to go to the World Science-Fiction Convention in Cleveland. That's where I met Larry Shaw, editor of the new science-fiction magazine, Infinity.
Larry and I spent much of the convention together and began a rapid-fire exchange of letters afterward. In one of them, he proposed marriage. I accepted. He came to Savannah to meet my folks and in the spring of 1956, I went to New York to get married. In retrospect, I think we were a little hasty. In 19
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 26, 2025
The Valdez horses is a heart-breaking novel set a few years after the end of the Civil War, in which the father of Jamie Wagner was killed. He sets off shortly after his fifteenth birthday from Savannah, where he and his mother and sister had been staying with an aunt, to seek his fortune in the West. He's taken in by a horse breeder named Chino Valdez, and it's an aggressive coming-of-age story about how he grows to manhood; it'd probably be marketed as YA if it were published today. The historical details seem spot-on, and it's a very well written (if bleak) story. I'll avoid specific spoilers, but I recommend avoiding it if Old Yeller or That Scene in The Godfather bothered you. It was filmed as Chino by Dino De Laurentis starring Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland in 1973. The novel won a Golden Spur award for the best Western novel of 1967. I have read a lot of Hoffman's science fiction (she was a big-name sf fan and married to sf editor Larry Shaw) and decided to read this one after reading Harlan Ellison's endorsement a long, long time ago.
February 4, 2024
Well-written coming of age Western.
March 13, 2017
Excellent novel. Well-written, emotional, a little brutal at times. A classic!
January 2, 2014
A warning should come with this western novel: “May Break Your Heart.” Hoffman lets the bittersweet sadness of her story creep up on you unsuspected for the length of this short novel rather like Jack Schaefer’s Shane (1949). In a similar narrative device, Hoffman has her story told by an older man remembering an episode from his youth. The boy, Jamie Wagner, is a teenager looking for work when he comes upon the horse ranch of Chino Valdez, a reclusive man of few words...
Read my review at my blog.
Read my review at my blog.
June 9, 2019
No. Just NO. That's the last time I read a book on my Mom's suggestion. If you love a good horse story, this ain't it. Be warned!
September 24, 2025
One of the Best westerns ever written. A slim volume that packs a mighty punch. A young boy is taken in by a man who trains horses; his animals are the best trained in all the land; he is Valdez and he is famous far & wide, but he has enemies and a Past. The adolescent grows under his care and tutelage, learning to tend to the horses and to himself. You will laugh and you will cry because author Lee Hoffman makes you invest in these wonderful characters.
June 15, 2018
Chino Valdez was ugly, withdrawn, and a devil when drunk. But everyone respected his ability as a horseman. No man knew breeding and training the way Valdez did. Yet even though he earned the admiration of a young boy, and tamed the wildest stallion, there was one thing he could not control -- the love of a woman he could never have...
March 22, 2009
I picked this up because Bill Crider noted the author's death a few months ago in his blog. This was billed as an unusual story of the West on the bookjacket and lived up to that. It won the Spur Award for best Western. A good quick read.
May 14, 2008
A story of a man who loved his horses and what he taught a young man about life and living and love and his horses. A man who would not sell out his principles for the greed of others.
Read
September 3, 2008A good story about a man who raised horses and how people wanted to take what he had and a young man who learned some lessons from him. Ending is great
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews