Book Review: Blood of the North

Title: Blood of the North

Author: James B. Hendryx

Date: 1938

Publisher: Triangle/Doubleday

ISBN: none

Length: 278 pages

Quote: "Time'll come when Angus'll be wantin' a wife, mayhap." "Aye, an' Jean could go further an' fare worse."

James B. Hendryx wrote several of these cheap young-adult novels, apparently attempting to appeal to boys and girls at the same time. Blood of the North is a "Western" adventure story, although it's set in the Northwest rather than the Southwest, with fur traders instead of cowboys. It's also a romance. Young Angus Murchie, whose late lamented mother was "Indian," doesn't think he has a right to marry bonnie blue-eyed Jean McPherson--even though their elders think they'd make a perfect pair. Angus has to prove himself a storybook hero, brave, tough, woods-wise, and also able to out-trick a despicable developer in real estate law, before Jean can sweetly tell him that "the really great chiefs who were your mother's ancestors" will be a lot to live up to. Fade out with a kiss, as all romances of this period always do. To find out how Angus proves himself you have to read the book.

Novels like this one, forerunners of movies and TV shows, used to be regarded as a sort of vice--mentioned in some church rules right alongside dancing and gambling--and students used to be warned not to waste their eyesight reading them. It is therefore ironically appropriate that surviving copies are worth more now than they were when new.

Fair disclosure: I did not particularly care for the story. So what? I seldom do like novels. If "Rocky Mountain High" is your favorite song and Lake Louise is your favorite landscape, you probably would like this book for the landscapes alone. If you're interested in the history of the 1930s and 1940s, here is an authentic artifact of pop culture from that period. Or you might want it just because it's old enough by now to count as a decorative item.