Max Evans – författare

Legendary western author Max Evans has spent his entire life working with cows and horses. These rangeland animals, and other creatures both domestic and wild, play pivotal roles in his stories. This magnificent collection, beautifully illustrated by cowboy artist Keith Walters, showcases twenty-six animal tales penned by Evans during his long and celebrated career. Both fiction and nonfiction, the stories in this collection get us inside the heads and hearts of numerous four-legged critters - dogs, horses, burros, goats, cattle, deer, coyotes, and more. ""The Old One,"" for example, shows us the world through the eyes of a prairie dog as she watches her latest litter of pups rolling and tumbling around the mound and thinks of all the things she will need to teach them. And in ""The One-Eyed Sky,"" an aging cow with a new calf and an old coyote with a litter to feed circle each other warily, trying to protect their young, until a rancher intervenes. Not one to shy away from difficult subjects, Evans also delves into the ""animal nature"" of human beings, as in ""The Heart of the Matter,"" where two Vietnam vets and friends kill a deer and then turn their rifles on each other. These captivating tales display Evans's trademark mix of raucous humor and vivid, poetic descriptions of the high plains of West Texas and his beloved Hi-Lo Country in northeastern New Mexico. He reminds his readers of simpler times and more honorable people even as he evokes the merciless environment in which his characters, both animal and human, struggle to survive.

Mildred Clark Cusey was a prostitute, a madam, an entrepreneur, and above all, a survivor. The story of Silver City Millie, as she referred to herself, is the story of one woman's personal tragedies and triumphs as an orphan, a Harvey Girl waitress on the Santa Fe railroad, a prostitute with innumerable paramours, and a highly successful bordello businesswoman. Millie broke the mould in so many ways, and yet her life's story of survival was not unlike that of thousands of women who went West only to find that their most valuable assets were their physical beauty and their personality. Petite at five feet tall with piercing blue eyes, Millie captured men's attention by her very essence and her unmistakable joie de vivre. Born to Italian immigrant parents near Kansas City, she and her sister were orphaned early and separated from each other. Millie learned hard lessons on the streets, but she never gave up and she vowed to protect and support her ailing older sister. Caught in a domestic squabble in her foster home, Millie wound up in juvenile court with Harry Truman as her judge. This would be only the first of many brushes in her life with prominent politicians. When physicians diagnosed her sister with tuberculosis and recommended she move West to a Catholic home in Deming, New Mexico, Millie moved with her. Expenses ran high and after a brief stint waiting tables as a Harvey Girl, Millie found that her meagre tips could easily be augmented by turning tricks. Thus, out of financial need and devotion to her sister, Mildred Cusey turned to a life of prostitution and a career at which she soon excelled and became both rich and famous. The book contains sordid details and frank language that will make many readers blush. It is unvarnished language, as recorded directly from Millie by Max Evans over a period of almost 20 years. It presents a complete picture of the business of prostitution as it was practised in the West from the late 1920s to the mid 1970s, told by the most successful madam in the business.

First published in 1999, 'Faraway Blue' is based on the real-life exploits of Sergeant Moses Williams, former slave, Civil War veteran, and Buffalo Soldier in the Ninth Cavalry Regiment. Included in Moses's story are four women and two men representing the ethnic groups and economic levels found in the late 1800s American Southwest. At the story's opening, Williams' cavalry unit has one assignment: kill Apaches in the 'faraway blue' mountains of southeastern New Mexico Territory, also known as the Black Range. As a fighter in the white man's campaign to obliterate the Indians and take over their lands, Williams finds a nemesis in Nana, an old Warm Springs Apache warrior who is a tactical genius. Nana leads his small band of followers to repeatedly strike area mining camps and settlements. Both men know they must meet before the end of the war and a maddening cat-and-mouse pursuit ensues. Williams is sustained by his love for Sheela Jones, a mulatto whom he wants to marry when the army will allow it. But Sheela's love for Moses guides her to take an immense risk just as Moses and Nana ride out to settle their score.

Almost as famous for the legendary excesses of his personal life as for his films, Sam Peckinpah (1925–1984) cemented his reputation as one of the great American directors with movies such as The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Max Evans, one of Peckinpah’s best friends, experienced the director’s mercurial character and personal demons firsthand. In this enthralling memoir we follow Evans and Peckinpah through conversations in bars, family gatherings, binges on drugs and alcohol, struggles with film producers and executives, and Peckinpah’s abusive behavior - sometimes directed at Evans himself.Evans’s stories - most previously unpublished - provide a uniquely intimate look at Peckinpah, their famous friends (including Lee Marvin, Brian Keith, Joel McCrea, and James Coburn), and the business of Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s.

In his eighty-plus years, Max Evans has known, owned, ridden, and been thrown by quite a number of horses. In For the Love of a Horse, Evans shares his favorite horse stories for all to enjoy. As Max explains, "I wanted a wide range of adventures from another time, with different horses, of different breeds, and a sense of history of those special days." Max begins with his first horse, Cricket, which he received when he was four years old. At the age of ten, he helped with a horse-drive from far southeast New Mexico, through west Texas, and on to the final destination in Guymon, Oklahoma. Later, PDQ was a horse that seemed very gentle and laid-back, until someone rode him. And then there was Molly, who liked to fly through and around obstacles on coyote hunts.This book is for all those who enjoy reading horse stories as much as Max loves telling them. Saddle up! "The recognition is long overdue. (Max Evans is) sui generis. He understands the present West better than anyone else, what it's like to be there now living in two worlds of the pickup truck and the bronco."--Charles Champlin, former Denver bureau chief of Time and retired arts editor of The Los Angeles Times, quoted in The New York Times

Ty Hale, a young corporal from Lovington, New Mexico, finds himself alone in the middle of a grain field in Normandy after being knocked unconscious by the explosion of a German artillery shell. Stunned from the explosion and overwhelmed by visions of the grandfather who raised him and the simple life of the New Mexico prairie he has left behind, Ty attempts to rejoin his unit but instead stumbles onto a country estate and inextricably into the lives of its inhabitants. Philippe Gaston, a former music teacher, his stunningly beautiful daughter Renée, and Hans Heinike, a German deserter and an accomplished musician, are attempting to carve out a normal existence in spite of the chaos and destruction that surrounds them. As Philippe devotes his time to his German protégé, Ty and Renée fall in love and Ty learns of the Gaston estate's unique legacy of survival and the most recent story of violence and sacrifice that has preserved this pristine oasis in the midst of a raging war.The music that permeates their solitary existence, whether it be the buzzing and chattering of insects and birds, a violin and human voice joined in concert, or the fire of machine guns and the distant rumble of tanks, draws these unlikely comrades together and reveals the common humanity that resides in us all. The war, the music, the love, and the rhythms of nature are all timeless and eternal.

The bawdy and moving story of two contemporary bronco busters, The Rounders, originally published in 1960, was Max Evans's first novel and is still his best known work, thanks largely to the success of the 1965 movie version starring Henry Fonda and Glenn Ford. Acclaimed for its realistic depiction of modern cowboying and for its humor, it is also a very serious work, described by the author as a tragicomedy.

At its heart, The Hi Lo Country is the story of the friendship between two men, their mutual love of a woman, and their allegiance to the harsh, dry, achingly beautiful New Mexico high-desert grassland. The story is told by Pete, a young ranch hand, whose best friend is Big Boy Matson. Together they drink, gamble, fight, work, and rodeo. They both fall hard for a married woman--the attractive, bored, and dangerous Mona.When it was first published in 1961, the novel was both a celebration and an elegy. It captured something jagged and authentic in the West, and it caught the attention of Hollywood--notably Sam Peckinpah, who spent twenty years trying to make a movie of this multilayered and plainspoken novel. It would take another twenty years for Martin Scorcese and Stephen Frears to finally do it. Now in a special 60th anniversary edition, The Hi Lo Country continues to tell a quintessential story of the people and the land found in the American West.

Winner of the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Biography--OtherAlmost as famous for the legendary excesses of his personal life as for his films, Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984) cemented his reputation as one of the great American directors with movies such as The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Max Evans, one of Peckinpah's best friends, experienced the director's mercurial character and personal demons firsthand. In this enthralling memoir we follow Evans and Peckinpah through conversations in bars, family gatherings, binges on drugs and alcohol, struggles with film producers and executives, and Peckinpah's abusive behavior--sometimes directed at Evans himself.Evans's stories--most previously unpublished--provide a uniquely intimate look at Peckinpah, their famous friends (including Lee Marvin, Brian Keith, Joel McCrea, and James Coburn), and the business of Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s.

Winner of the 2021 Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Western Novel Max Evans' wit and humanity sparkle in the guise of a humorous cast of characters set in the underworld of Taos, New Mexico, in the 1950s.The underground world of con men, winos, prostitutes, laborers, and artists has been an abundant source of material for great writers from Dickens to Bukowski. The underground world of Taos, New Mexico, is no different. In the late 1950s this mountain town was higher, brighter, poorer, and farther removed than London, Paris, or Los Angeles, but it was every bit as rich for the explorations of a young writer. Max Evans, the beloved New Mexican writer of such enduring classics of Western fiction as The Rounders and The Hi-Lo Country, returns to form with The King of Taos. Set in the late 1950s, the novel tells the stories of sharp-witted Zacharias Chacon, aspiring artist Shaw Spencer, and a circle of characters who drink, fight, love, argue, and—mostly—talk. Readers will enjoy this witty and moving evocation of unforgettable characters as they look for work, love, comfort, dignity, and bottomless oblivion.

From among his numerous publications, award-winning author Max Evans has selected his personal favorites. The more than thirty pieces include short novels, essays, short stories, introductions to other works, and magazine articles spanning several genres and most of his writing career. Through them all runs a common thread: the understanding of love Evans has for the West and its people, and his ability to convey that understanding with humor and compassion. Included works are: Short Novels - ""Xavier's Folly"", ""One Eyed Sky"", ""The Wild One"", ""Old Bum"", and ""My Pardner""; Essays - ""Sam Peckinpah: A Very Personal Remembrance"", ""King John"", ""Long John Dunn"", ""Dinner with Frank Waters"", ""Riding the Outside Circle in Hollywood"", ""Many Deaths, Many Lives"", and ""Song of the West""; Short Stories - ""The Ultimate Giver"", ""Blizzard"", ""Don't Kill My Dog"", ""The Far Cry"", ""The Wooden Cove"", ""The Third Grade Reunion"", ""Sky of Gold"", ""A Man Who Never Missed"", ""Big Shad's Bridge"", and ""The Call""; Introductions and Forewords - ""Patricino Barela"", ""Some Sweet Day"", ""The Hi Lo Country"", ""Final Harvest and other Convictions and Opinions"", and ""Rounders 3""; and, Magazine Articles - ""The Cowboy and the Professor"", ""A Horse to Brag About"", ""Showdown at Hollywood Park"", ""The Wild Bunch"", ""The World's Strangest Creature"", and ""Super Bull"".