Rio Grande - Curtis Bishop

Curtis Bishop (1912-1967) is a forgotten writer these days, but he had a decent career in the pulps, publishing more than a hundred stories in various Western, Northern, and sports pulps between the mid-Thirties and the early Fifties. After that, he wrote quite a few juvenile sports novels and a handful of Westerns.

I recently picked up several of the Westerns, and the first one I’ve read is RIO GRANDE, published in hardback by Avalon Books in 1961. There’s also a large print edition from Center Point published in 2016. Although marketed as a Western, this is actually more of a historical novel, set in Texas and Mexico in 1842 and centered around real-life events including General Woll’s invasion and capture of San Antonio for the Mexican dictator Santa Anna, the retaliatory incursion into Mexico by a group of Texian irregulars, and their capture and the subsequent execution of some of them following the notorious black bean incident at Salado.

Being a Texan born, bred, and forever, I’m pretty much steeped in this history, so I knew the general outlines of what was going to happen. Bishop sticks pretty close to the actual incidents, too, inventing a young Texian named Joel Howard and having him interact with various real-life characters like Bigfoot Wallace, Jack Hays, and Samuel Walker and take part in what really happened.

There’s also a purely fictional storyline about Joel’s romance with the beautiful granddaughter of a wealthy Mexican rancher, and Bishop does a fine job of blending this storyline with the history. Overall, this is a very good book with nice action scenes and a good sense of time and place. My only complaint is that the ending is a bit of an anti-climax, but I enjoyed the book enough that I’ll certainly read more by Curtis Bishop.

One other thing I liked about this book: I read the 1961 Avalon edition, and the first stop on its no doubt circuitous way to me was at the Beemer Public Library in Beemer, Nebraska. I know this because the library card, card pocket, and due date slip are still in the book, as well as a notation that the library added the book to its collection on January 27, 1961. It’s book number 4220 in that collection, in fact. It was checked out 19 times, with the due date hand-written on the slip that’s glued into the book, and each patron signed the book’s card when it was checked out. That’s exactly the way we did it when I started working in my hometown’s small, recently established library in 1964. I love these little windows back into a time that’s long gone, but that I remember so well. Which has nothing to do with the book itself, but I thought some of you might appreciate it.

(My copy has no dust jacket and there are no images of that jacket on-line, so that’s why I’ve used a stock photo of the large print edition’s cover.)