Easterns and Westerns -- the Short Stories of Glendon Swarthout

Easterns and Westerns is bestselling novelist Glendon Swarthout's very last book and only short story collection. It includes 13 stories and one previously unpublished novella (longer story), some of which have appeared earlier in national magazines like Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and the Saturday Evening Post. One of these, "A Glass of Blessings," was an O'Henry Prize Short Story from 1960. Another, "A Horse For Mrs. Custer," became a 1956 Western film for Columbia Pictures starring Randolph Scott and Barbar Hale -- retitled 7th Cavalry. A third story, "Mulligans," has been made into a hit short comedy film by the author's son and editor of this volume, Miles Swarthout. Mulligans! stars Tippi Hedren and Marcia Rodd and has played in 40 film festivals around the world and aired numerous times on the Women's Entertainment (WE) cable TV channel. But six of these short stories are appearing in print for the very first time.

This story collection also includes a brief autobiography Glendon Swarthout wrote, plus his short speech to the Western Writers of American upon receiving their Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1991, the year before he died. The author's son, Miles, has written an Afterword covering his father's literary career and placing these stories in the context of Glendon's novels, including short stories which prefigured two of his most famous books -- Where The Boys Are and Bless the Beasts and Children.