California Passage

Cliff Farrell (1899-1977) began his writing career in the newspapers and pulps. By the early 1920s, he could be found routinely in the pages of Sport Story Magazine and Cowboy Stories. Over his career, he penned over 600 short stories for pulps, magazines, and anthologies using his own name and house names like Dean McKinley, Frank Litchfield, and Franklin B. Holt. He also wrote nearly 30 western novels. I decided to read his mid-career work, California Passage, originally published as a serial in the pages of the Saturday Evening Post in 1957. 

In the opening pages, readers are introduced to a rugged mountain man named Luke. He's a skilled hero who was orphaned as a child and forced to survive in the wilderness. He's in a small midwestern town when he's approached by Ellen, a desperate woman with a very shady past. It's clear she's being pursued by a man, so she asks for Luke's help. She offers to pay him to help lead her on a risky trek toward California, hoping to outrun the coming winter. At first Luke rejects her proposal, but after a few skirmishes and a murder attempt, he agrees to help. Ellen and Luke will be traveling on a wagon train consisting of other settlers, vagabonds, and troubadours, hoping to get rich quick in the California mountains. 

Luke and Ellen run afoul of a team of shysters traveling with the wagons. Menafee is a wealthy businessman possessing all of the despicable criminal elements. He has a few henchmen, including a hired gunman deemed The Missouri Kid. Luke is also forced into an intense situation with two husky fellows hired as Menafee's enforcers. There's a method to the madness, which is the center of Farrell's road trip survival yarn.

Central to the story is the backstory on Ellen. Luke discovers paperwork on a dead man that suggests Ellen is actually a wanted fugitive. Her father was a banker who may have run off with over $100,000 in cash. Mixed into the heist is Ellen and her lover Gilmore, a man later found dead. Is Ellen this same woman? Is she meeting up with her father in California? Is Luke in love with her? These are all important elements fueling this smooth, calculated western.

Farrell is a terrific storyteller who uses a familiar crime fiction trope to enhance this western. Like Clifton Adams and Harry Whittington, Farrell is telling us a compelling crime-noir, only dressing it in boots and spurs. I loved the Luke Storm character and his inner conflict of being an educated man living the life of a mountain warrior. He's torn with an inner ache for Ellen and a domesticated life, but pulled into barbaric acts by personal demons and the predators around him. California Passage exhibits conflict and redemption in a truly entertaining way. Highly recommended!

Get the book HERE.