When those went out of business, he was able to get his first novel, Hot Iron, published in 1955. He covered the desolation on a daily basis and was intimately acquainted with what it meant for the people who were forced to cope with its devastating manifestations.Īs a sideline, Kelton had been writing fiction since the late 40’s and his stories were first published in pulp magazines. And Kelton was there – not as a rancher, but as an agriculture journalist. The novel is set in West Texas during the 50’s when the region endured and barely survived a drought that lasted seven long years. And many a boy would become a man before the land was green again.” And the really big dries like 1918 came once in a lifetime. No one expected another drought like that of ’33. "Men grumbled, but you learned to live with the dry spells if you stayed in West Texas there were more dry spells than wet ones. ‘The worst we’ve seen’: Ranchers threatened by historic heat and drought - New York Times (October 5, 2022)Įlmer Kelton wrote in the prologue of The Time It Never Rained:
Reality emulates fiction fiction emulates reality:
The reading of this novel lies not in what happens next but in the unfolding depth of a strong character and the clear picture of a time and a place. There is no surprise ending to this story, no magical solution to the harsh realities of life in West Texas. When the drought breaks, it has lasted too long and he is too old. Self-sufficient, courageous, with a strong sense of right and wrong, he is also old and overweight, a thoroughly believable human being who has trouble communicating with the wife who loyally struggles to keep life in its pattern, the son who has no feel for the land but yearns for the rodeo circuit, the Mexican family who has worked for him for years and whose help he can no longer afford.Īlthough Charlie never loses his dignity and never quits, he does not win out in the end. The struggle made them fiercely independent, a trait personified in Charlie's persistence throughout the seven dry years, his refusal to accept defeat, his opposition to federal aid programs and their inevitable bureaucratic regulations, his determination to stay on the land he loves and respects even as he suffers with that land.Ĭharlie is by no means the typical cowboy hero. By that time, Charlie Flagg, the central character of this novel, was one of a dying breed of men who wrested their living from the harsh land of West Texas. In the 1950s, West Texas suffered the longest drought in the memory of most men then living.
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