Cattlemen Verses Sheepmen
The Starlight River cut Starlight Valley in half making for a natural barrier which separated the cattle ranches from the sheep farms, but someone wanted to put an end to this uneasy truce which Boone Kermit's father had established years before. But Boone was going to preserve it in any way he could. This story of cattle verses sheep is told in the unique style only someone who grew up in the west could tell it. L P Holmes was born in Colorado but grew up in the mining country of the Sierra Nevada of California, and lived the rest of his life in Napa Valley on a ranch. He had seen it all, and in his novels he told it the way he saw it. High Starlight was and is a fine novel with characters drawn from the people around him, I am sure, and it shows the kind of actions and reactions of people when placed in certain situations; the kind of actions consistent with life when people with a strict code of behavior are placed in those situations. Forget this is a tale of cattle verses sheep; for it might be any thing else where two groups so violently oppose one another. L P Holmes is one of the "greats" in the western genre, and he needs to be recognized as such by the later generation of readers. I have collected his books for more than 40 years.
