Wednesday, April 21, 2021

LOST SISTER--MY FAVE WESTERN SHORT STORY by Cheryl Pierson



Hi everyone! Sorry for the re-post, but this one bears repeating and you may have missed it the first time around--I ran out of time and thought I'd put up this "oldie but goodie" about this wonderful, wonderful Dorothy M. Johnson story rather than totally miss my blog date! Heaven forbid! Hope you enjoy--even if you may have seen it before. With the recent thread on our WF loop about favorite westerns, I thought this might be one that bears talking about again. It's just a great story. Can't say that enough. What's YOUR favorite short story?

I know we’ve talked before about Dorothy M. Johnson, the iconic western short story writer who penned such classics as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Hanging Tree, and A Man Called Horse; but today, I wanted to tell you about another short story of hers that I read a few days ago. Quite possibly, the best short story –in any genre—that I’ve ever read.

You may never have heard of it. It wasn’t made into a movie, because it too closely mirrored the true life of a real person, Cynthia Ann Parker, mother of Quanah Parker. The story is called Lost Sister.

I’d heard this story mentioned before by a couple of friends, and thought, “I need to read that—I’ve never read much of Mrs. Johnson’s work but the movies have all been good.” I know. I hate it when people say that, too. Anyhow, I bought a collection from Amazon that contained the three stories I mentioned in the first paragraph and Lost Sister as the fourth. Of course, I had to read The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, since that’s tied for my all-time favorite western movie, along with Shane. I was so disappointed. The characters in the short story were not the same as my beloved Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne! Hmmm. Well, even though I was disappointed, I decided to give Lost Sister a shot.

It more than made up for my lukewarm feelings for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Lost Sister is the story of a woman who has been kidnapped as a young child by “the hostiles”. She has an older sister, who remembers her well from childhood, and loves her with the devotion that most older sisters have for a younger sister. Through the forty years she has been gone, the oldest sister, Mary, has cherished memories of her younger sibling.

There are three younger sisters, as well, who have no recollection of the Lost Sister, Bessie. The older sister doesn’t live with them, but in a different town a thousand miles away. The three sisters are notified that their sister, Bessie, has been “rescued” and is being brought back to them. The story is told from the eyes of a nine-year-old boy, whose mother lives with the sisters. She is the widow of their brother, who was killed by the Indians. The boy has dreams of growing up and avenging his father’s death, but something changes once his Aunt Bessie comes back to live with them.

Up until Bessie is returned to them, they have gotten much attention from the neighbors, and have been pitied as being the family who had a sister stolen by the savages so many years ago. Once Bessie is returned, their standing in the community takes a subtle twist. The other sisters don’t know how to handle Bessie’s homecoming. They make plans to go into her room and “visit” with her every day. One of them decides to read to Bessie from the Bible for thirty minutes each day. The others come up with similar plans, none of which include trying to understand Bessie’s feelings at being ripped away from her Indian family.

The oldest sister, Mary, comes to visit. What’s different? Mary loves Bessie, and accepts her; and Bessie loves her—they both remember their childhood time together. The language of love overcomes the barriers of the spoken language that neither of them can understand, for Bessie has forgotten English, and Mary doesn’t know Bessie’s Indian dialect. But Bessie has a picture of her son, and Mary admires it, and by the time Mary is to go home, she has made arrangements for Bessie to come live with her—a huge relief to the other pious sisters who had made such sympathetic noises about her being reunited with them in the beginning.

In a fateful twist, Bessie makes her own decision about what she will do, taking her own life back, and helping her son avoid capture. This is one story you will not forget. Once you read it, it will stay with you and you’ll find yourself thinking about it again and again. It doesn’t fit the mold of a romance story, except for the fact that I think of Bessie being in love with her husband, having children with him, and then being “rescued” and forced to live in a society she had no ties with any longer…except one—the love and understanding of her older sister, Mary.

No specific Indian tribe is mentioned in the story, probably for a purpose. I think, one of the main reasons is to show us the cultural differences and how, in this case, the “civilized” world that Bessie had come from and been returned to was not as civilized as the “savages” who had kidnapped her. Also, as I say, Cynthia Ann Parker’s story, at the time this story was published, was not that old. There were still raw feelings and rough relations between whites and Indians. But by leaving the particular tribe out of the story, it provides a broader base for humanity to examine the motives for “rescue” and the outcome for all concerned, of a situation such as this in which it would have been better to have let Bessie (Cynthia Ann) remain “lost.”

I’ve posted the link below for the story as it was printed in Collier’s Weekly on March 30, 1956. It’s also available on Amazon in several collections.
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Colliers-1956mar30-00066

Do you have a favorite short story to tell us about? Please share--I'm all about making an ongoing reading list!

21 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing this story. I am eager to read it

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    1. It is heart-wrenching, for sure, but the behaviors of the characters are so realistic, for better or worse. Just an excellent story.

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  2. I'm actually waiting for mail delivery of O. Henry's collection of short stories called "Heart of the West." Mary Austin also writes wonderful short stories.

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    1. Oh, Lynn, I love O. Henry. This sounds like a great collection. I will also look into Mary Austin's work, too. Thanks!

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  3. Cheryl - a great collection of Austin's stories is in "Western Trails," which is a modern compilation of her best work. I also love her novels and, of course, "Land of Little Rain."

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    1. I will look it up, Lynn. Thanks so much--I love a good short story.

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  4. I've read it and agree, it's a good one. I've always loved "Gift of Cochise" by L'Amour and almost any short by Peter Dawson or Alan LeMay. Doris

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    1. Doris, I will read that one--"Gift of Cochise"--I love LL's stories, short or long. One of my favorite LL stories is a contemporary (probably more "retro" now) about a pilot shot down in enemy territory and how he survives. The Last of the Breed. It was not a short story, but a novel--still one of my favorites of his!

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    2. "Last of the Breed" is really good, but I love "The Walking Drum". It is amazing, especially the history. D

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    3. Oooohhh, I have not read that one. Here I go, off to Amazon...

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  5. Cheryl,

    My favorite western short story is "The Man who Shot Liberty Valance". I also like "Shane", which, from what I've read about the novel, it was a serialized three-part short story when it was first published, and it didn't have the tree stump 'bonding' scene that is in the novel.

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    1. SHANE was originally "Rider From Nowhere", a three-part serial in ARGOSY in 1956. I've read that version, but it's been so long ago I don't remember if that scene is in it. I think you're right that it isn't.

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    2. Kaye, I will allow that even though we are twin soul sisters, we have some differences of opinion and we will just have to accept that. LOLLOL! I appreciated her storytelling in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, but oh, gosh, I was soooo disappointed all the way through it. I rarely say I like the movie better than the book/story, but in that case, I really did love the movie so much more.

      As for Shane, that is just one of the best westerns ever written IMO, and I had no idea it was a three part short story! The things you learn from other Western Fictioneers!

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    3. Cheryl

      You made me laugh... soul sisters with a difference of opinion... hahahaha - I read The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance a long time before I ever saw the movie, which undoubtedly influenced my affinity for the story. I will concede for the sake of our continued twinness that the movie definitely improved the story in several ways, not the least of which was changing the name Bert Barricune to Tom Doniphon.

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    4. YES. That name change was very important. VERY. LOL LOL

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  6. I think I must have read your original blog as this story sounds so familiar. I've had a story idea for twenty years since traveling through southern Saskatchewan where Chief Sitting Bull hd camped for a while before returning to the U.S. I still want to write that story but first I think I have to have a better understanding of a white woman held captive, and how she becomes immersed in their society. I love Dances With Wolves, and have read the book, but cannot name any short stories. Perhaps I could start reading Bessie's story and a lot of other great books written on that subject.

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    1. Elizabeth, you should read "One Thousand White Women" by Jim Fergus. I read that years ago and was just in awe of the fact that it was written by a man --he really got into the women's POV wonderfully, and what a great story that was. Now he's written two more books to make a trilogy--The Vengeance of Mothers is book 2 and Strongheart is book 3. I have been wanting to buy those others and read them, because book 1 was WONDERFUL.

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  7. I've somehow never read any of her short stories, but I'll make up for that ASAP. Thanks for the nudge, Cheryl. And I'll second Lynn's rec for Mary Austin's Land of Little Rain.

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    1. Jeff, I hope you will read Lost Sister. It's one of those stories you will think about for a very long time. I'm going to snap up Mary Austin's Land of Little Rain. I do love good short stories!

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  8. Great review, Cheryl. I have a Dorothy M. Johnson short story collection called A MAN CALLED HORSE (previously published as INDIAN COUNTRY.) In it there’s a story called FLAME ON THE FRONTIER, which seems to be covering the same themes as LOST SISTER. It’s about two sisters captured by the Sioux during the outbreak in Minnesota in 1862. It’s a very good story, and there’s another really good one called THE UNBELIEVER which seems to be a fictionalisation of the events surrounding the death of mountain man Jim Beckwourth. But my favourite in that collection is WAR SHIRT, a poignant tale of a white man captured by the Cheyenne who refuses to leave them even when the tribe are facing destruction. I particularly like Johnson’s empathy towards her characters, making real, believable human beings out of both whites and Indians.

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    1. Andrew, that sounds wonderful! I will definitely look for that collection, and The Unbeliever really sounds great, as well as War Shirt! Thanks for telling me about these. I'll jump over to Amazon and see if I can snap them up!

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