{"id":750,"date":"2025-12-30T22:41:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T22:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wp_stories\/?p=750"},"modified":"2026-02-07T12:20:54","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T12:20:54","slug":"the-familiar-stranger-kelton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/?p=750","title":{"rendered":"The Familiar Stranger – Steve Kelton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An Elmer Kelton Western by Steve Kelton and John Bradshaw
— A Hewey Calloway Adventure<\/em> —<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prologue<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Yay! A nice simple western yarn … no serial killers or other-worldly apparitions I hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s another writer milking a profitable literary franchise by co-authoring new books under his name plus<\/strong> another writer. Here the book bears Elmer Kelton’s name and his and a third fellow named John Bradshaw. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elmer, the original money-maker, died in 2009 but there’s more bucks to be had from cranking out more Hewey Calloway adventures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A epilogue note says that the son, Steve Kelton, also died (in 2022) and John Bradshaw finished the book. So that’s a lot drama we and even gotten to the book yet!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That sounded meaner than I intended. This was a delightful book to read!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Hewey finds himself out of normal his West Texas element. He is in southern Colorado, outside Durango. He pulls up at an isolated cabin, and there’s a dude with inside sweating out a bout of smallpox!. Hewey nurses him back to health. The fellow sneaks off in the middle fo the night (why?), then Hewey gets a mild case(!?) of smallpox. I’ve never read about a mild case of smallpox before! When smallpox shows up in a book, the person dies. But I guess rough, tough cowboys in the wild west can just shake if off and keep riding!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

70 Pages in<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Lovely descriptions of the Colorado Rockies.
Pure mountain lakes like you don’t get in Texas etc.
Kind of a nice travelogue so far!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is my first Hewey Calloway book and I think I’m a fan! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a little Wyoming town he passing through he needs to get his horse re-shod, so he works a deal with the local blacksmith to shoe a couple of mules for in exchange for getting his horse fitted out … hilarity ensues …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We spend 10 pages or so on the details of how to shoe a horse or mule in the old west. Maybe this is what Hewey is all about … we shall see!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

105 Pages<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Hewey gets it in his head to go to Laramie<\/em> for the Cowboy Roundup<\/em>! Plenty more local color and cowboy trivia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Familiar Stranger<\/em> of the title is I think, Bob Wilson<\/em>: the guy Hewey helped survive the smallpox. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Bob fellow snuck out on Hewey in the first part of the book because he had been unjustly accused of bank robbery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He turns up again in Laramie at the blacksmith shop. Small world out there! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

145 Pages<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

If you’ve ever driven through Wyoming you know it is a very big place! But this small group of main characters keep running to each other in each town they go to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway… the evil bank robbers abduct Bob Wilson from the Laramie jail while the Sheriff is having dinner with the pretty girl (there’s only one :). Hewey and the Sheriff and the retired Ranger guy catch up with them at the blacksmith’s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the whole plot wraps up in a few pages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • The bad guys get the drop on the good guys.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Bob Wilson does something really brave and gets shot in the chest.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • The nice blacksmith has conflated Wilson with his dead son. When he is shot the blacksmith is so enraged that kills the lesser bad guy with his tongs.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • In the confusion the retired Ranger knocks out the major bad guy and handcuffs him.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Side note: I don’t think they ever recovered the bank money.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Bob Wilson will survive (yay!).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • He will probably marry the pretty girl and stay in Laramie (yay again!)…<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • so she can be near her dad and …<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Bob can work under the blacksmith and be a surrogate for the son he lost a few years ago.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Very neat and tidy, right? Just the kind of simple plot I was looking for!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Hewey is still a-hankerin’ to see Canada, so he heads north. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There are a couple of odd little stories in the last few that don’t fit the plot at all, e.g. Hewey finally see a Mountie in his cool red jacket way the heck up there somewhere… <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In view what I described in the intro where both Keltons died off and the book was finished up by a third party, I think these are stort fragments from Kelton’s notes that the last guy tossed in here so they would live in these pages rather than just throwing them away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Good for him, and a lovely book all in all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    An Elmer Kelton Western by Steve Kelton and John Bradshaw — A Hewey Calloway Adventure — Prologue Yay! A nice simple western yarn … no serial killers or other-worldly apparitions I hope. Here’s another writer milking a profitable literary franchise by co-authoring new books under his name plus another writer. Here the book bears Elmer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[52,33,53],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-kelton","tag-western","tag-wyoming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":974,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions\/974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}