Books with title The Good Old Boys

Honored by seven Spur Awards and peer-selected as history's best Western writer, Elmer Kelton is the beloved author of a bevy of Texas tales, including his own revealing memoir Sandhills Boy. Set in 1906, The Good Old Boys is hailed as one of Kelton's finest works. Cowboy Hewey Calloway loves to ride the open range like a solitary sailor on an endless sea. So when barbed wire and newfangled contraptions threaten his world, he's dead-set against progress - until he meets a pretty little teacher.

Hewey Calloway has a problem. In his West Texas home of 1906, the land and the way of life that he loves are changing too quickly for his taste.Hewey dreams of freedom - he wants only to be a footloose horseback cowboy, endlessly wandering the open range. But the open range of his childhood is slowly disappearing: land is being parceled out, and barbed-wire fences are springing up all over. As if that weren't enough, cars and other machines are invading Hewey's simple cowboy life, stinking up the area and threatening to replace horse travel. As Hewey struggles against the relentless stream of "progress, " he comes to realize that the simple life of his childhood is gone, that a man can't live a life whose time has passed, and that every choice he makes - even those that lead to happiness - requires a sacrifice.