Deadwood City is an interesting case. It is one of the original run of the first printing of the first titles in the Bantam Series. I even have a first printing myself, I believe, from 1980 (cover price $1.50). It was in the relatively small pile of these books that were available to me when I first discovered the series. I even read it back then.
I did not, however, buy this one until very recently, and it's not one that really stood out to me as a kid. And as such, it went under my radar a bit for many, many years. However, I did have some memories of it from the beginning and I did want to eventually pick it up, and since the reasons that I was not interested in it as an 8-10 year old kid faded away or were even aggressively replaced, I found that I was curious about it again.
Deadwood City, like a few others that I've reviewed so far, is one of the ones Packard published with a smaller press along with Montgomery before getting picked up by Bantam, so in that sense, it predates the series proper. (It is also, allegedly, from this printing that the series title was derived; a tagline was attached to the book that said "Choose your own adventure in the Wild West!" However, this is just a curiosity; I don't consider the series to have started properly until the mass market Bantam paperbacks came out with the Bantam trade dress and the Paul Grainger (or later, other artist) illustrations and covers. After all, small local printers wouldn't likely to have been able to distribute books nationwide, so until I could walk into Waldenbooks the mall and find them or even the bookshelf section of Walmart, they effectively didn't exist.
The more interesting challenge for this title was that it was a western. When I was an eight year old boy in 1980, westerns were an old-fashioned genre that I had little interest in. They were the movies and TV shows from my dad's childhood, and although he still watched some of the classic John Wayne's and whatnot with me, and I think even syndicated reruns of Bonanza and Rawhide would pop up on TV from time to time (and I know for sure that The Lone Ranger did too) I just wasn't very interested in Westerns. The whole plot element from Pixar's early Toy Story movies where Woody is replaced by a "space toy" is pretty much exactly own childhood; space toys in the wake of Star Wars were sexy, and westerns were not. I had also always been a big fan of fantasy and other exotica even before I was old enough to read Tolkien and Alexander. Not only did I have Star Wars action figures, but I also had toy dinosaurs, dragons and even a few knights with swords and stuff like that, and in 1980 my favorite cartoon on TV was Thundarr the Barbarian. I wouldn't say that I avoided Deadwood City because it was a western; I do remember reading it at least a few times, but because it was a western, I wasn't nearly as interested in it as I was in the more gratuitously exotic titles in the series. Like our last foray, The Third Planet From Altair, which I was probably more interested in that it deserved, just because of the spacey science fiction topical matter.
Of course, this has all changed for me as I've gotten older. I've really come to appreciate the western as a genre a great deal. Even before playing Red Dead Redemption titles on the playstation, I'd come to see the western as a genre that kind of defined America and Americans in many ways; Americans working out what their identity was in the wake of the Civil War, the destruction of the free, defederalized political realm that had been our previous identity, and attempting to justify and validate our expansionist and even imperialist policies via some kind of Manifest Destiny. Either that, or the attempt to leave behind the corrupted post-Civil War country and make a new, freer life on the frontier, which is less cynical but which more closely resembles the text of this book, anyway. And while those may seem mutually exclusive, I don't think that they are. Questions of national identity are complicated and fuzzy. But again, I see the western as the iconic American genre in many ways, and certainly up through much of the 60s, so did most Americans. Revisionist westerns still lingered as a relatively popular concept through the 70s, but they were fading from the public consciousness at the time I found this book, and revisionist westerns weren't really westerns either; they just shared the same superficial trappings and setting.
Anyway, long story short (too late) I've come to appreciate the western. Not just for its stunning, epic Rocky Mountain and intermountain desert scenery, although I've also developed a very strong love for that over the decades as well, but for the themes and message of the classic western as a storytelling form.
The second reason that I was hesitant was the artwork. Marketing used to say that girls didn't mind identifying with boy characters (part of the reason Rowling wrote Harry Potter instead of Hermione Grainger as her main character) but that the reverse wasn't true. I also believe that the Choose Your Own Adventure stories, representing the classic boy's adventure tales as they often do, probably appealed more to boys than to girls in general. If either of those were true, and especially if both were true, the decision that Bantam made to have Grainger illustrate the protagonist as a girl was an unusual one. I'm taking it for granted that such was Bantam's decision, although it may well have been Packard's or even Grainger's himself for all I know (the original pre-Bantam printing has the protagonist character look like a guy, although illustrated in a very cartoony children's book fashion so he looks more like a generic little kid than anything else.) And, I have to admit that as a little kid, that was pretty off-putting to me. As I've gotten older, I learned to not be overly concerned about that, of course. In fact, I think Grainger's illustrations have really grown on me even more, and Deadwood City has some of his best work. There's sweeping scenic vistas, exciting action shots, and highly detailed studies with lots going on in places like saloons and whatnot. His illustration of Kurt Malloy, the iconic outlaw villain, is positively edgy, with him have bullet-shaped sharp teeth and exaggerated villain appeal. Great stuff, as always from Grainger, but I really think this is some of his best.
According to the cover, there are 37 possible endings. I noticed that most of them seem to be positive. There are some where you die, of course, or otherwise fail to accomplish anything noteworthy, but for the most part, in most of the endings things seem to work out well, if perhaps lacking in over-the-top flair. As I've gotten older, I think that I appreciate the lack of over-the-topness considerably too. Enjoying work on a ranch, saving up and eventually buying my own actually sounds really, really attractive to me now, whereas as an eight year old in the early 80s, I'm sure it seemed kind of boring. In fact, all of the choices and structure of the book probably seemed boring to me as a kid; it was the iconic "sandbox." Rather than a plot that it tried to force on you, it just had all kinds of things that you could do that were iconically western, and you just decided which ones to pursue and wandered through them. You could work on a ranch, you could become a prospector, you could ride shotgun on a stagecoach, you could get involved in high stakes poker, you could tangle with an outlaw gang, you could encounter Indians, etc. But again, this increased its subtlety in a way that makes it more attractive to me now.
It's funny that it took me becoming an older adult, developing a love of the west from hiking through it, and a love for the western after seeing Hollywood destroy so many other of our genres, for me to really appreciate the more subtle and understated Deadwood City, but I've come to find that of the ones I've reviewed so far, it's one that I think ranks near the top, and I'd heartily recommend it to any collector. With the caveat, of course, that you get an older copy with the Grainger cover and original trade dress. It doesn't look like this title made the jump into any subsequent series or reprints from other companies, but it did get reprinted with new cover art at some point, which has a more generic mid-80s look to it.
Anyway, let's explore some of the endings I encountered:
- lived with an Indian tribe for a few months, teaching them English. Left with long-lasting Indian friendship.
- as owner of a new Deadwood City newspaper, I made a difference in the lawlessness of the community as an old west version of an active and committed concerned citizen.
- avoided tough subjects in said newspaper, lost readership, and had to sell my printing press and move to California.
- become a respected journalist for reporting fairly on the cattle/sheep controversy in my newspaper.
- Pick a side in the cattle/sheep controversy, and end up losing circulation and having to move back east where I work at a Chicago paper.
- after a dispute with a corrupt partner, I chase him off and go back to town with a bag of gold. Twice, actually, although in one ending, it's described as saddlebags full of gold, which sounds like quite a bit more.
- didn't confront my corrupt partner, and was left in town broke.
- got a lousy job at a lousy ranch, hated the food and the work and the conditions. Nice picture of me huddled in a coat on my horse in a blizzard, though.
- struggle on a cattle ranch against aggressive sheepherders, but eventually raise prize winning bulls and become famous and fortunate.
- take a lousy ranch job for a few weeks, but move on to California. Although this ending doesn't sound particularly attractive, it has the single best two-page spread of artwork. I really wonder if Grainger had either been to, or at least worked from a picture of, Sublette Mountain and the Brooks Lake area just east of Yellowstone in Wyoming.
- become a carpenter, get really good at my job, and eventually earn enough money to buy my own ranch.
- infiltrate Kurt Malloy's gang, but feed information to the sheriff who arrives with a posse. My help in getting him arrested makes me famous in Deadwood City and roundabouts.
- get a nice job at the Tumbleweed Ranch, where my boss likes me and I like the work, saying that leaving Deadwood City was the best choice I ever made.
- try to escape internment in an Indian camp, but ended up not making it.
- joined Malloy's gang and got arrested.
- joined a big cattle drive, although then the story stopped.
- have a friendly Indian trade encounter, and then move on to Santa Fe, where I'm happy that I'm not in Deadwood City anymore.
- have an unfriendly Indian encounter where I become a pincushion for arrows.
- after dealing with a bully on the staff of the Red Creek, I became the ranch manager. In another similar ending, I eventually bought the ranch myself after managing it.
- in a third similar ending, I don't become the ranch manager, but I hear that the bully is arrested for armed robbery
- made a bunch of money playing poker, and quit while I was ahead, walking smugly out of the saloon.
- lost all of my money playing poker, slept in a barn, and left town for Silver Springs and hopefully better luck.
- got a lousy job at the saloon, but as soon as I could, I quit and headed for California.
- got a great ranch job that I really liked, decided I may stay there forever.
- went to Silver Springs were everyone is excited to hear that the railroad will come through. I went to Kansas to work for the rail.
- stuck through some tough times on a sheep ranch, until the railroad came along and we could sell our sheep back east. Became ranch manager.
- went and got the marshal; arrested Kurt Malloy who, it turns out, is a coward and gives up quickly when one of his men is shot.
- got chased out of town by Malloy.
- three endings where I successfully protected gold on the stagecoach, and became a hero. In at least one, I decide that I really like the excitement and keep doing this job. The others, it doesn't mention my future plans at all.
- cross the desert to Silver Springs and work on a family friend's ranch.
- died of thirst trying to cross the desert to Silver Springs. Twice, although in one, a rattlesnake was the final straw, but I was only bit because I was delirious and exhausted because of thirst.
- went to Denver to negotiate with the Bureau of Indian Affairs on behalf of some Indians who want peace.
- deal with some aggressive cow ranchers on behalf of a sheep ranch. End up settling down, raising a family, and commenting that I couldn't wish for a better life.
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