Pulp Writer: Twenty Years in the American Grub Street

Powers (1905-71) was the consummate pulp writer: from 1928 to '43, he wrote hundreds of stories under various pseudonyms for magazines like Wild West Weekly and Weird Tales. He also lived the life of an itinerant cowboy, making his home in towns throughout the West, squatting occasionally in ghost towns to soak up residual spirits of the cattle rustlers, vigilantes and dirty sheriffs he wrote about. Without the efforts of his daughter [should by granddaughter], editor Laurie Powers, all of this history would have been lost; she knew almost nothing about her father's [should be grandfather's] career when she decided to write about Doc Dillahay, his only published novel, for a college course in literature. The paper would grow into this book, which sent her across the country piecing together Powers' life from the remnants of long-defunct publishing houses and boxes of unpublished materials. In the process, she finds not only Powers's lost memoirs but a measure of security lacking in her much-diminished family circle. This work is a treasure for pulp fans, and a fine introduction for those looking to learn more about an underappreciated American art form.