Between the Rockies and a Hard Place

When a European sets off to ‘discover’ America, you know what to expect: a coast-to-coast trip comparing New York with California, and a glib putdown of fly-over states. British writer Alan Wilkinson plots a different course, heading north from Laredo, Texas along the Hundredth Meridian. His aim? To explore the line that divides two Great Plains cultures. Sod-buster to the east, cowboy to the west.

Between the Rockies and a Hard Place takes the reader all the way to the Canadian line, 2,700 miles of big skies, dusty trails and one-horse towns where there are more names in the cemetery than in the phone-book.

As Wilkinson’s readers have come to expect, he may be an outsider, but at heart he’s a westerner. His stories are spiced with humor and peopled by characters, from the old-timer who puts him up in his woodland cabin, to the Native woman returning to the rez after a lifetime in the big city, and the historian who lets him sleep in an empty ranch house – and next morning mentions that it’s haunted. Wilkinson tells these stories with affection, all the time pondering the question: was the settlement of this rugged land just a piece of foolhardiness? The fact that he only finds his answer in the final chapter suggests that it was a question worth asking.