Thomas Savage has captured a compelling drama of passion and cruelty through his characters. The Power of the Dog is a powerful and unforgettable story. Thomas was born in 1915 in Salt Lake City. He has written thirteen novels.
George and Phil “were more that partners, more than brothers. They rode together at roundup time, talked together as if they as if they met for the first time, talked of the old days in high school and at a California university where George, as a matter of fac, had flunked out the same year that Phil was graduated. Phil recalled tricked he'd played on other students, friends they’d had—high jinks. Phil had been the bright one, George the plodder. // It was something of a joint decision when they sold their steers each fall or bought a Morgan stud to improve their saddle stock” (6).
To continue, “In the fall the brothers with their hired hand trailed a thousand head of steers twenty-five miles down the road to the stock yards in the tiny settlement of Beech. Unless the weather was miserable, the rain beating out of the north, the sleet cutting the face or the cold hindering the circulation of the blood, the event had something of the quality of an outing, or picnic;
the young fellows thought of the lunches Mrs. Lewis the cook had put up to be eaten at noon when the shadows hid under the sagebrush; they thought of the saloon across the highway from the yards and of the rooms over the saloon where the whores lived” (12).
Continue with Part II. “The wind was never idle in Beech summer or winter, nor was the windmill atop the shed behind The Inn. The ratchet and chain to pull the fin that dragged the face of the mill out of the wind-stream had broken long before the Gordons moved there. Winter and summer it turned, the shaft attached to the eccentric purposelessly moving slowly up and sown, doing no work, attached to nothing, squeaking, squeaking so painfully that sleep was difficult for the infrequent transient’s trapped in the town.” [ ] “‘We never should’ve moved here in the first place,’ he often told Rose, his wife, and when he told her she would look at him with her great eyes, begging him not to say it again, but saying nothing with her mouth. She was all eyes, that young woman.” (21).
The Power of the Dog—according to Larry Watson, “offers many pleasures readers will be forgiven if they do not immediately notice that it also engages the grand themes—among them, the dynamics of family, the varieties of love, and the ethos of the American West.” Thomas Savage is a writer of real consequence. 7 Stars!
Likely Stories is a production of KWBU. I’m Jim McKeown. Join me again next time for Likely Stories, and happy reading!