Heartbreak on the High Sierra - Softcover

Darknell van Doon, a land speculator, wants to drive a group of women from their beautiful valley in the Wild West. Sounds like a typical rehash--but our heroine--known as "Typewriter"--and the rest of the gang don't need a man in a white hat to save them. These lesbian separatists don't take kindly to strangers in Kimama, their sanctuary, a place where ". . . a woman could live and breathe . . . without a wedding band and petticoats to make her decent." This spoof of a dime western, full of impressive cussing and shooting, ventures into the absurd when Amelia Earhardt sic flies in from the future and Calamity Jane returns from the dead to help out. But Cooper uses or abuses conventions as she pleases, hilariously exploding the genre. The humor stems from the author's scrambling of sexual stereotypes and her recasting of a standard western in terms of a struggle against patriarchy. Van Doon, "puffed up like a toad during mating season," is an inflated target representing man. But Cooper still manages to portray a group of real women, tough as any outlaw cowboys yet also showing streaks of sensitivity and understanding.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.