Mal Bernhardt
28 September 2026
58m 54s
Louis L'Amour's The Man from the Broken Hills (1975)
00:00
58:54
Out of Order Book Club
In the 12th episode of this season we journey into a genre we've never looked at before - the Western. Mal is taking a look at Louis L'Amour's 'The Man from the Broken Hills'. L'Amour is possibly the most prolific author I've read so far. By the time of his death he had collected and read over 10,000 books and sold over 200 million copies of his work. However, this is also an author that wrote from the 1930s onwards, he only became very well-known in the 1970s. His key writing ambition, in the last few decades of his life was to write a forty novel history of the American West through the experiences of three migrant families - the Sacketts, the Talons and the Chantrys. It was this series of novels showing their interwoven stories that 'The Man from the Broken Hills' is a part of. In this episode, we'll be asking whether this novel can standalone or whether you can read it out of order.
Email: outoforderbookclub@outlook.com
Useful links and helpful sources:
Louis L'Amour's official website - The Louis L'Amour Trading Post
60 Minutes - Louis L'Amour (1976)
The Life and Legacy of Louis L'Amour - Art of Manliness podcast
John D. Nesbitt's Change of Purpose in the Novels of Louis L'Amour (1978): This was a really useful piece of research just because it game me a framework for looking at this Milo Talon novel in context.
Harold E. Hinds Mexican and Mexican-American Images in the Western Novels of Louis L'Amour (1977): This is a good piece of research to read because although it doesn't cover all aspects of race and gender, I think it is nuanced investigation of how an author can be well-read, make an effort with depictions of other cultures and genders but be very inconsistent.
Adrian Burton's Saddling up for Louis (2013): Read this if you want to know whether L'Amour was right about tumbleweed.
Christine Bold's review of Education of a Wandering Man (1989): A brief but interesting review of L'Amour's memoir.
Louis L'Amour's letter to The Wilson Quarterly (1987): A salty (pun intended) response by L'Amour to a problematic article in WQ showing his understanding and research of Asian cultures and their exploration skills before the Europeans even got out of the dock.