Review of Thompson’s “Cattle Country and Back Trail” on Book Pleasures

There’s a new review of my father Erwin A. Thompson’s “Cattle Country and Back Trail: Two Tales from the Thompson Western Series” on Book Pleasures

Among other comments, the reviewer Ernest Dempsey says:

“Cattle Country and Back Trail is an exciting reading of the values that characterized the heroes of the not-so-remote past. Foremost, these heroes were courageous and loyal–qualities that are wanting in our times.”

Ernest also uses the word ‘Instantiate’ which neither my father nor I had heard nor read before. He says it means to ‘provide an instance of’, e.g. in the expression ‘heroes instantiate ideals’.
Daddy says Ernest is “A dog for words.” and he replies, “I can’t help smiling being a dog for words. I think that’s exactly what I do because being a reviewer I have always to find new words and unique expressions. It’s like guarding my thoughts with a dog’s alertness.”

Ernest also expressed a note to us that “the tale revived in me a hidden pleasure that I felt repeatedly while, as a kid, watching TV series like Crossbow, Five Mile Creek, and The Yellow Rose. I also sensed a difference in the English Erwin has used. I’m not sure what the exact difference between this story’s language and the English I have mostly read before is, but I can feel that Erwin’s English appears to be very strong, or powerful sort of thing. I can’t exactly describe it but there is something clearly very different about it.”

As often as I’ve read and heard my father speak and read his own words, I could not tell him. Maybe someone out there can. I hope so.

I hope you’ll get a chance to read the entire review…there is also a place there to comment.